We can fight off Trump’s onslaught

The situation is dire, but some people (even in the media) are stepping up.

This past week has been a whirlwind of activity by the right-wing enemies of democracy. Their would-be dictator was installed as president, and he issued a flurry of executive orders to roll back protections that are crucial in a free country.

It’s clear – as many people warned – that the right wing is much more organized than it was in January 2017. Anyone with a functioning brain knew Donald Trump was lying when he distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, and indeed Trump’s moves this past week largely reflected the extremism of Project 2025.

What we’re seeing now are practical steps to make it easier for an abusive government to crush dissent later:

• The Trump regime pardoned Jan. 6 domestic terrorists, reinvigorating goon squads willing to commit violence against democracy advocates.

• Trump froze all actions of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, making it easier for police to violate people’s rights and for Republicans to suppress the votes of people of color.

• Republican senators confirmed Christofascist extremist Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, a crucial position if Trump follows through on his threat to send the U.S. military into American cities uninvited.

• Trump disabled the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which means illegal government spying on Americans has a better chance of going undetected.

Given all this, you may think it strange for me to say that this past week went better than I feared. That doesn’t mean Trump is less bad than I thought, or that this coming week won’t be horrendous. But the start of Trump 2.0 gave me flickers of optimism for these reasons:

The news media aren’t folding as much as I expected – so far.

I’ve been impressed with the tough coverage of Trump in mainstream media. I wish that had happened before the election; it mostly didn’t. Perhaps journalists eased up on Trump because he was in an election campaign and they worried they’d look partisan. Now that he’s the person in power, they seem to be more comfortable as aggressive watchdogs.

In any case, CNN wrote a hard-nosed story about the Jan. 6 pardons, with a subhead reading “Justifying the pardons with lies.” How’s that for truth-telling?

The Washington Post, whose owner Jeff Bezos has bent the knee to Trump, led its website with a story headlined “Clemency for Oath Keepers, Proud Boys fuels extremism threat, experts say.” The story made it clear that Trump’s wave of Jan. 6 pardons and commutations “adds to a slow-burning assault on public servants” and “breathes new life into extremist movements.” Even news outlets that are pressured by their owners to be friendlier to Trump can break through with quality reporting sometimes.

The New York Times, which is ridiculously averse to calling Trump’s lies ”lies,” has used sharp language about Trump’s actions as president. Its article about the privacy board, for example, was headlined “Trump Seeks to Paralyze Independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Watchdog.”

Major media must maintain tough surveillance on Trump no matter how much he threatens them.

There are many quality Americans like Bishop Budde.

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., had a captive audience in Trump during a post-inaugural prayer service. She asked him “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” including LGBTQ people and immigrants.

Mercy shouldn’t be controversial, but in the current insanity, it is. Budde looked brave and reasonable. Trump looked petty and obnoxious when he later called Budde a “so-called bishop” who conducted a “very boring and uninspiring” service. He demanded an apology, which he didn’t get.

Maybe Trump wasn’t inspired by Budde, but a lot of us were. She set a great example: Do not submit.

The Jan. 6 pardons didn’t go down well.

A week before the inauguration, Vice President-elect JD Vance tried to assure us that Trump would be careful in his clemency of Jan. 6 convicts and defendants. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vance said.

But that’s exactly what Trump did, ordering clemency for more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol, including violent attackers.

Trump rarely faces enough blowback for his repugnant words and actions. But this time was different. Police officers beaten by the mob didn’t go away and hide. They appeared on TV to express their outrage over the pardons, and we should be grateful that they were willing to relive the horror to stand up for what’s right.

In a rare split in the Republican Party, a few GOP lawmakers expressed opposition to the pardons. Many others, however, offered lame defenses, misdirection, or disinterest. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.” Sen. Kevin Cramer said, “It's not ideal, but I'm not overly concerned about it."

Rep. Tim Burchett said on CNN that he didn’t know if the Jan. 6 mob was "truly violent." That prompted anchor Jim Acosta to tell him, “This is not Fox, congressman. You can’t just spin a tale and pull the wool over people’s eyes. This is CNN. This is the news.”

That was refreshing.

Another Republican pleading ignorance was Sen. Tommy Tuberville. His television set must have been broken for the last four years because he claimed he hadn’t seen any video of violence by the Jan. 6 convicts. “I don’t believe it because I didn’t see it,” he said.

To address this kind of shameless denial, the New York Times published a story using videos to document that people who got pardons from Trump committed violence on Jan. 6. No word on whether Tuberville has “seen it.”

A poll taken after the inauguration showed that 58% of Americans opposed Trump’s sweeping pardons. And Trump made the uproar worse two days after his pardons by calling the attacks on police officers “very minor incidents.” The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, denounced the pardons as sending a “dangerous message.” This was a group that endorsed Trump in the last three presidential elections.

Trump’s birthright citizenship ban got kicked to the curb, for now.

A president’s executive order is not more powerful than the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And Trump failed in his initial attempt to ban citizenship for children born in this country if neither their mother nor father is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Federal Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, issued a two-week temporary restraining order – and a sharp rebuke to the Trump regime’s lawyer: “I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional. It just boggles my mind."

There are some broken chains in the Republican lockstep.

Yes, the Senate confirmed Hegseth, with Vance breaking a 50-50 tie. But three Republicans voted against him, and it’s possible that nominees such as Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might go down. The Republicans’ majority in the House is razor-thin, and if Democratic leadership can toughen up – if they can stop bringing statements of “deep concern” to a knife fight – they might be able to obstruct some of Trump’s abominations.

Don’t get me wrong – we’re in big, big trouble. Many people will suffer. We might lose our country. But there is a resistance in this country. And I believe there are more good people than bad people, despite the loud voices and propaganda power of the bad ones.

We can win this thing. If we fight.