Make Trump break the law.

"Why bother? He'll just ignore the courts." 

I'd say that's dumb, but that used to be me. Okay, it is dumb. And besides, I've changed my mind.

Challenging the Trump regime in court is meaningful even if, when he loses, he goes on to defy the ruling of that court. When courts rule against him, and he does it anyway, he is a criminal breaking the law. If he wants to do crazy shit, the least we can do is make it illegal.

It has been profoundly frustrating to watch as Donald Trump has evaded accountability. From the grifting and self-enrichment of the first Trump administration, to the two impeachment results, to the piles of stolen boxes piled in the loo at Mar-a-Lago, it has felt like he's laughing at the United States and at all of us. Suckers and Losers, I guess.

Now, with the immunity invented by the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States not even a year ago, it sometimes feels as if we've been transported to a different country in a different time, a place it is becoming hard to recognize.

The Supreme Court's decision, which Mark Joseph Stern writing for Slate described as having "no basis in the Constitution as written," was ostensibly in response to Trump's indictment for attempts to subvert the 2020 election. A lot of analysts at the time focused on the impact of the decision on Trump's various indictments, and on the Government's authority to prosecute a former president for conduct while in office. Unfortunately, that is not the problem we have now. 

Others people, beginning with Justice Sotomayor in her razor-sharp dissent, foresaw the world we now inhabit.  In fact, Stern warned in that same article:

The immediate impact of the court’s sweeping decision will be devastating enough, allowing Donald Trump to evade accountability for the most destructive and criminal efforts he took to overturn the 2020 election. But the long-term impact is even more harrowing. It is unclear, after Monday’s decision, what constitutional checks remain to stop any president from assuming dangerous and monarchical powers that are anathema to representative government. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her terrified and terrifying dissent, “the President is now a king above the law.”

As predicted, the decision has emboldened Trump 2 to enthusiastically expand his power grab. Now we live in a world where people are being illegally abducted off the streets by masked officials and illegally disappeared. Where legally constituted agencies are being illegally demolished. Where legal U.S. citizens are being illegally detained and sometimes deported. For an interactive look at the carnage, you can look in here. Or just watch the news.

It can be depressing. It definitely can be discouraging. Still, I think the lamest take on social media is whatever version of "Why bother? He'll just ignore the courts." 

First, even though he has thus far been able to evade some orders, some damage has been mitigated. Firings have been barred and rehires have been ordered. Funds have been unfrozen. I'm not a lawyer, but there are very good ones fighting Trump and winning: Marc Elias and the Elias Law Group, Lee Gelernt and the lawyers at the ACLU, Norm Eisen and the team at Democracy Defenders Action, the lawyers fighting for Harvard and the ones at Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey and many others. We're not in this alone.

Yes, many of these cases will end up before a very Trump-friendly Supreme Court, and rulings will be overturned and orders vacated. And that will be bad, but bad enough to give up trying? Right now there doesn't feel like there's a lot we can do to stop Trump, but one thing we can do is fight him in court for as long as the courts last. If we're going to bitch about Democrats not doing everything conceivable to thwart Trump, we cannot say the courts don't matter.

And if the Supreme Court is going to make shit up in order to give Trump what he wants so they get what they want, make them. Make them do the wrong thing. I'm not saying they're going to pay for it, but at least we continue to recognize the difference. 

Now I get why folks want to withdraw. It comes in waves of outrage and feels overwhelming. But using "It's pointless" as an excuse is the coward's way out. As for me, I'm pissed off that I have to spend the last decades of my life fighting against this asshole and his gallery of goons and hate-trolls. But resistance is never futile, and fighting back is never pointless, and I'm glad I'm still alive to do it. 

 

Back to the courts. Yeah, the Trump regime might end up ignoring court orders. But there is real value in forcing Trump to break the law. When courts rule against him, and he does it anyway, he is a criminal breaking the law. If they don't rule against him, or if no case is brought in the first place because "he'll just ignore the courts anyway," what he's doing becomes the new law. 

And even if he wins at the Supreme Court, even after multiple losses in lower courts, because the Supreme Court is corrupt and hell bent on gambling that we'll probably survive the present disaster as long as they get to rewrite the Constitution and remake the government in their preferred ideological image, there will be a record of the Court aiding and abetting Trump's unconstitutional behavior and criminality. A record on which to rely if we can ever muster the courage to expand the Court and reverse its own very special brand of lawlessness.

I'm not naive enough to believe there must be some kind of reckoning coming, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or Nuremburg trials. I haven't a clue what will be left of us when this is over. It's just that, if we don't force Trump to break the law, he becomes the law instead of the criminal he is.

Make the Trump regime do the wrong thing. Otherwise we just let them do it and pretend it was right.