With just a week to go until Election Day, Donald Trump keeps giving us reasons to elect Democrats to the House and Senate. Like, beyond the high gas prices, the endless Culture War bullshit, or our insatiable elitist hatred of the Cheesecake Factory, valid those those motives are. If Democrats retake the majority in the House, which looks likely, they’ll be able to use powerful tools to block the authoritarian agenda at every step.
For one important example, as Greg Sargent reports at New Republic, House Democratic leaders are already making plans to use the power of the purse and Congress’s investigative powers to rein in Trump’s attempts to attack his political enemies. Trump can order the Justice Department to find some pretext for stripping Rep. Ilhan Omar of her citizenship, or to punish James Comey for breathing, but those orders won’t go too far if Democrats halt funding for those investigations and prosecutions. On top of that, Sargent says, House Dems are ready to “extensively deploy subpoena power against officials at many levels to expose the corrupt processes by which Trump orders underlings to carry out these directives.”
Notice that bit about “officials at many levels” too. Trump couldn’t get away with the fascist crap he’s pulled without an army of little fascists willing to do his bidding, and they all need to be dragged from their stinky little bunkers into the sunlight.
One thing Democrats appear to have learned from Trump’s first administration is that while impeaching the fucker may be satisfying (and now justified on even more grounds), it doesn’t accomplish anything when Senate Rs are perfectly happy to overlook a few high crimes and misdemeanors. With voters demanding an opposition that actually does something, Dems need to recognize that if they retake the House (and let’s hope the Senate), they can’t just write angry letters, they need to shut the fuckery down using the tools the Constitution provides them.
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Real Democracies Don’t Deport Political Enemies (We Would Support The Hell Out Of Deporting Elon Musk Though)
Stopping Trump’s racist vendetta against Ilhan Omar is vitally important, because if a president can order the Justice Department to gin up a prosecution to denaturalize and deport a sitting member of Congress, we’re all fucked. Neutralizing duly elected representatives of the people is some shithole-country Dictator shit in itself, but the implications go well beyond a vendetta against one member of Congress. (They’ve investigated Omar before, of course, and found nothing improper with her citizenship. Which simply won’t do!)
Trump makes no secret of his hatred for Somali Americans, and with his vile October 8 endorsement of race war — “The Somalians [sic] should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back!” — effectively declared an entire ethnic community enemies of the state.
As a Doktor of Rhetoric, we are by nature leery of slippery slope arguments. But Trump is enthusiastically preparing a very muddy hill that he’d like to push people down. He’s targeted Rep. Omar and the folks who elected her — not only Somali-Americans but also lots of white progressives in her district. At a rally in Michigan Sunday, Trump invited 9/11 family member David Beamer onstage to insist that Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el-Sayed may be a citizen, but is not an American. Beamer’s son Todd died aboard United Flight 93, and Trump told the crowd they must vote for Republican Mike Rogers because “Michigan needs to stand up and fight just like Todd did to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol.”
Yes, yes, he really did say “with votes.” This time. But Trump’s most fanatical supporters talk all the time about negating the First Amendment to bar Muslims from citizenship, insisting it’s not even a religion but a “totalitarian political movement” that’s fair game for persecution. They’re full of shit, but Trump is happy to encourage them to wallow in it.
How Democrats Can Fight This Foul Fuckery
Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin (Maryland) and Pramila Jayapal (Washington) are already preparing to gum up Trump’s misuse of the DOJ. Raskin, who’ll chair the House Judiciary Committee if Dems win the majority, told Sargent that a Democratic House will coordinate with “our Appropriations Committee partners to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to cut off money that is being used for political harassment and persecution.” That can come in the form of limiting budgets for particular parts of the DOJ, and with language in funding bills prohibiting funding for politically motivated prosecutions. If that leads to Republicans shutting down the government rather than limit Trump’s vengeance program, that’s fine.
Democrats can also use their committees’ investigative powers to put Trump officials on the hot seat, in line with Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s call for holding midlevel political appointees responsible for helping Trump subvert the Constitution. Sargent notes that Dems could aggressively use their oversight powers to
subpoena all communications between Trump, the White House, DOJ, and the Department of Homeland Security about the targeting of Omar. Trump has claimed he didn’t personally direct DOJ’s decision to pursue Omar; internal communications might show otherwise.
Beyond that, and even if individual underlings refuse to cooperate (hello, contempt of Congress charges), Democrats could also hold hearings and subpoena documents and former Trump staffers to examine Trump’s first-term investigations of Omar and of Comey. Neither of those attempts resulted in charges, but a close look at emails between the White House and DOJ could help show patterns of corruption.
Raskin told Sargent that “Everybody involved from top to bottom will be subject to legislative investigation,” and that’s a welcome step.
That’s an important change from previous attempts to hold Trump accountable on his own: Dogged though Jack Smith’s investigations were, they focused almost solely on Trump, not his coconspirators. Dems shouldn’t let that old proverb about a fish rotting from the head down keep them from investigating all the rotten fish guts of the Trump administration.
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ALSO TOO: Get out your library cards or visit your preferred local new/used bookseller, because Wonkette Book Club is back, baby! This coming Sunday (November 1) we’ll start discussing Bill McKibben’s 2025 bestseller Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (Wonkette affiliate link), all about how solar energy (and wind ‘n’ storage) can get us out of our climate fix and remake the world’s economies with justice for all (but we gotta do it fast and do it right). More here!
I want Alina Habba in the rogues' gallery of those investigated.
She accepts a $50 million private pay package WHILE she's working at DOJ, and the next thing you know a presidential pardon appears for a family member of her benefactress.
Like, right in broad daylight!
It's outrageous even by their standards.
WAIT! WAIT! WAIT!!!! WE HAVE TO BE NICE TO THE MAGATS AND WELCOME THEM BACK INTO POLITE SOCIETY! IT'S NOT RIGHT TO PUT THEM IN JAIL FOR THE CRIMES THEY COMMITTED!!!
-Dim Centrists and Consultant Class