Weekly Mailbag #5 - What can WE do to fix this?

In our weekly Q&A, getting into the details on what *we* can do to fight back and fix some of the bigger problems ahead of us.

Suddenly the “mailbag” thing isn’t just a motif, now that it appears Trump is going to make a frontal assault on selling off the U.S. Postal Service — one of the first great accomplishments of government in this country, the model for national mail services all over the world, and a pillar of government service for rural America. All to make one of his billionaire cronies even an even richer Oligarch.

When Trump said he wanted to drag America back to 1798, he wasn’t joking. I know we’d have to fight to defend recent progress like the ACA — but apparently we’re going to have to relitigate fights over things like the Post Office and tariffs.

But we’ll get into all that sometime soon. In the meantime, on to your questions!

THIS was the way we made America great — a national public investment that united us into a single country no matter where you live and helped turn America into the #1 economy in the world.

Steve Engel: Love this suggestion [applying the rules from defeating Trump in court to fighting the new administration], but how do we get democratic leadership to actually buy into it and form the united coalition? So far they have been waaaay too cautious! Is there some way to get them to understand this is what the grassroots (and I'm sure average Dem voter) wants? Maybe a petition or online vote of some kind? Maybe what we really need to do is make some campaign $ pledges that contingent on Dems stepping up?

The faster and more effective way to affect the leadership is to unite into an organization — preferably with the ability to raise significant campaign funding — and then let your numbers do the talking. So your instincts are correct there. It’s all about how large your membership is and how much money you can raise.

And that’s exactly what I hope to be building with you in the new year. We’ll be starting piece by piece — beginning with a new show and new community, plus a new project to support legal efforts to defend democracy and the rule of law, and growing everything from there. As long as I can get enough coffee.

Gérard Mosset: Will we ever get an explanation from Garland of why he acted as he did?

No. Maybe? I don’t know. Perhaps he’ll give interviews or write a book or do some talks at the Kennedy School after he leaves government service, trying to justify why they had to be ever so cautious. “We’re talking about the former president of the United States here, you can’t just be throwing allegations around,” he’ll say, when we all know how much evidence there was, and that just is not how the job is supposed to be done. We think of Lady Justice as blindfolded, not knowing who she’s judging, but the prosecutors should be blindfolded too, enforcing the laws equally regardless of who the defendant is.

Garland peeked under the blindfold. And then he blinked.

And if that isn’t what happened, well, then, let’s hear it.

Gwynne: If the people who have the authority and means to stand up and enforce laws don't do it, then who can?

First, we sometimes have the ability to vote the cowards out. That is certainly true for an elected district attorney or state attorney general. We the People need to stand up and say enough is enough. If you can’t do the job, we’ll find someone who will.

Second, even once the prosecutors are in office, we need to be loud enough for them to hear us. The public outcry over Trump’s crimes and prosecutors’ unwillingness to pursue them is exactly why the Manhattan DA case and the DOJ cases ever happened in the first place — albeit far too late.

Third, much of the legal work ahead is going to be done by private advocacy organizations and teams — pro-democracy orgs like Democracy Forward, advocacy orgs like the ACLU, election-focused efforts like Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket, and a broad array of labor unions. They will need our help — and we’ll be talking much more about this soon.

‪Hey: Rep. Susan Valdés in FL ran and won as a Dem this Nov and days ago flipped to be a Republican giving them a supermajority. This is also less than a week after she tried to run as Dem chair of her county. This seems to be happening more often—people running as Dems knowing they are going to flip and defrauding voters—what can we do about it?

With the strong caveat that this does not constitute legal advice and I am not your lawyer . . . at least part of me wonders whether such a situation might constitute a fraudulent and deceptive business practice. A campaign is a business entity, often a limited liability company. It makes various statements to induce people to give campaign contributions, if those statements were misrepresentations, why isn’t that fraud? In theory, donors to such a candidate could sue to recover their contributions. In theory.

@hercules7-4011.bsky.social‬: What will Putin get this time?

Trump is trying to give him Ukraine, but so far he’s failed to do so. This will be one of the more interesting dynamics in the next several years, as there is a significant portion of the congressional GOP that wants to keep supporting Ukraine — it’s literally the thing that Mitch McConnell has named as his #1 priority in the remaining two years of his current (and potentially last) term.¹

Trump will likely try to dial back or even kill American involvement in NATO, for example. But that would require Senate approval — indeed, the latest defense authorization bill included a provision to require a 2/3 Senate supermajority in order for the president to withdraw from NATO. There is no way that Trump is going to get enough votes for that, as things currently stand.

As for how Ukraine will be able to fund its ongoing defense against the Russian and now North Korean invasion, this is also another great time to remember that European entities are still holding $300 billion (yes, billion with a b) in frozen Russian assets — and that these assets should be fully put to service in defending and rebuilding Ukraine.

Andrea Kushman: With federal employees under attack again, who are the lawyers that will help protect their rights? Is it just union lawyers? What about federal employees who are not in positions covered by the union?!

Yes, it will be union lawyers, along with lawyers from other pro-democracy orgs, and their work will benefit all federal employees — and in some cases millions of private sector employees too.

Many of the likely actions from the new administration (just see Project 2025) can and should and likely will be challenged in court under the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA). I gave a longer explanation on the APA last month — but the short version is that the president and other executive officials cannot just take whatever actions they want. They have to follow the law and the Constitution, and their actions have to be grounded in facts, in data, in reasonable public policy. If the administration tries to shutter the NIH or to fire droves of scientists and researchers who are trying to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s or to prevent the next pandemic, employees and unions and other parties can sue, and a judge can rule that such executive actions are illegal because they are arbitrary and capricious and have no reasonable basis. And that can include a preliminary injunction that stops the executive action from happening, pending trial and appeals.

Much more on this soon. But for now, remember the APA. It will be one of the most important shields in our efforts to defend America.

1. And as much as I deeply disagree with Mitch McConnell and have long loathed what he has done to this country that I love so much — well, we take our allies where we can find them, even if it’s only on the narrowest of grounds.

And also, sometimes, I just like an excuse for dropping a footnote. I really love footnotes.