NYT: "The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started"

The Shalom Center believes it is important that a wide spectrum of ideas are available to the Jewish and allied communities in the ferment of present debate and discussion on the future of Judaism and the Jewish people. That is likely to include ideas that do not accord with those held by The Shalom Center as a body. "Prophetic Voices" will be the platform for presenting a spectrum of such ideas to the world. The forum will be edited by Rabbi Arthur Waskow with this goal in mind. Calls for specific actions with a date, place, etc., will be published only if the Call fits into The Shalom Center policy about such actions.

This article, which ran in the New York Times yesterday, is more important as an index to efforts to begin prophetic action in a number of places that are usually much more calm and staid than it is for its specific politics. If you have thoughts about this emergence of prophetic action, please drop us a note.

Shalom,
AW, ed.


Excerpt below - link to full article here. 

The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started

By Charlie Savage, Reid J. Epstein, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
June 16, 2024

Opponents of Donald J. Trump are drafting potential lawsuits in case he is elected in November and carries out mass deportations, as he has vowed. One group has hired a new auditor to withstand any attempt by a second Trump administration to unleash the Internal Revenue Service against them. Democratic-run state governments are even stockpiling abortion medication.

A sprawling network of Democratic officials, progressive activists, watchdog groups and ex-Republicans has been taking extraordinary steps to prepare for a potential second Trump presidency, drawn together by the fear that Mr. Trump’s return to power would pose a grave threat not just to their agenda but to American democracy itself.

“Trump has made clear that he’ll disregard the law and test the limits of our system,” said Joanna Lydgate, the chief executive of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan democracy watchdog organization that works with state officials in both parties.

[ . . . ]

There is always discussion in any election year of what might happen if the other side wins the White House. Such talk has been typically limited to Washington chatter and private speculation, as much of the energy has focused on helping one’s party win the election and develop wish-list policy plans.

But the early timing, volume and scale of the planning underway to push back against a potential second Trump administration are without precedent. The loose-knit coalition is determined not to be caught flat-footed, as many were after his unexpected victory in 2016.

If Mr. Trump returns to power, he is openly planning to impose radical changes — many with authoritarian overtones. Those plans include using the Justice Department to take revenge on his adversaries, sending federal troops into Democratic cities, carrying out mass deportations, building huge camps to hold immigrant detainees, making it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with loyalists and expanding and centralizing executive power.

Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, said the planning for how to resist such an agenda should not be seen as an ordinary policy dispute, but as an effort to defend fundamental aspects of American self-government “from an aspiring autocrat.”

“He is no normal candidate, this is no normal election, and these are no normal preparations for merely coming out on the wrong side of a national referendum on policy choices,” Mr. Bassin said.

[ . . . ]

Interviews with more than 30 officials and leaders of organizations about their plans revealed a combination of acute exhaustion and acute anxiety. Activist groups that spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency organizing mass protests and pursuing legal challenges, ultimately helping channel that energy into persuading voters to oust him from power in 2020, are now realizing with great dread they may have to resist him all over again.


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Continue reading the full article at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-2025-democratic-resistance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0U0.o0hh.ZOhzzHipyqrZ&smid=url-share

Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash