Below is my column in The Hill on the growing calls for an organized resistance to the Trump Administration by Democratic governors and prosecutors. They may find, however, that the resistance movement this time around will be facing significant legal and political headwinds.
Here is the column:
The single most common principle of recovery programs is that the first step is to admit that you have a problem.
That first step continues to elude the politicians and pundits who unsuccessfully pushed lawfare and panic politics for years. That includes prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James and politicians like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who affirmed this week that they will be redoubling, not reconsidering, their past positions.
For its part, The Washington Post quickly posted an editorial titled “The second resistance to Trump must start now.” They may, however, find the resistance more challenging both politically and legally this time around.
It is important to note at the outset that there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values just because they lost this election. Our system is strengthened by passionate and active advocacy.
Rather, it is the collective fury and delirium of the post-election protests that was so disconcerting. Pundits lashed out at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half of the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.
Others blamed free speech and the fact that social media allows “disinformation” to be read by ignorant voters. In other words, the problem could not possibly be themselves. It was, rather, the public, which refused to listen.
That does not bode well for the Democratic Party. As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout.
Ordinarily, recovery can begin with “a terrible experience” when someone hits rock bottom.
After a crushing electoral defeat and the loss of the White House and likely both houses of Congress, one would think that Democrats would be ready for that first step to recovery. However, those hoping for a new leaf on the left do not understand the true addictive hold of rage.
In my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore rage and our long history of rage politics. There is a certain release that comes with rage in allowing people to do and say things that you would never do or say. People rarely admit it, but they like it. It is the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.
Over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts.
For months, Democratic leaders denounced Donald Trump and his supporters as fascists and neo-Nazis. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others suggested that democracy itself was about to die unless Democrats were kept in power.
Just before the election, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called those voting for Trump “anti-American.” By Hochul’s measure, over half of the American electorate is now “anti-American.”
James is the face of lawfare. She may have done more to reelect Trump than anyone other than the president himself. She ran on nailing Trump on something, anything. In New York, she was joined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in this ill-conceived effort. They fulfilled the narrative of a weaponized legal system. Every new legal action seemed to produce another surge in polling for Trump.
Yet there James was, soon after the election, with another press conference promising again to unleash the powers of her office to stop Trump’s policies.
Then there was Pritzker, doing the community theater version of “The Avengers” and declaring, “You come for my people, you come through me.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) added that he too will “fight to the death” against Trump’s agenda.
Rather than lower the rhetoric, these rage-addicts ran out for another hit.
Our prior periods of rage politics were largely ended by the public in major election shifts like the one this month. Things, however, are different this time around both politically and legally. The problem for the resistance is the very democracy that they claimed to be saving.
Democrats lost after opposing policies supported by an astonishing share of the public at a time of deep political division. That effort included opposing voter ID laws favored by 84 percent of the public, among other things.
They are now committed to opposing policies central to this election blowout, including deportations of illegal immigrants, which is favored in some polls by two-thirds of Americans.
Likewise, Democrats have already doubled down on attacks on free speech, including blaming their loss on the absence of sufficient censorship. On MSNBC, host Mika Brzezinski blamed the loss in part on “massive disinformation.” Yet, according to some polls, free speech ranked as high as second among issues on Election Day.
According to CNN, Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, the best among Black voters in 48 years, and the best among Hispanic voters in more than 50 years.
Harris actually lost a bit of support with women, and Trump won handily among some groups of women.
None of that seems to matter this time. We have an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public. Yet, with both houses of Congress under Republican control, the investigations and impeachment efforts that hounded Trump throughout his first term will be less of a threat in his second term.
For that reason, the center of gravity of the “second resistance” will shift to Democratic prosecutors like James, Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was just reelected.
Various Democratic governors are also pledging to thwart Trump’s policies despite the results of the election.
The “second resistance” will try to use state power to oppose the very issues and policies that led to this historic political shift. That means that there will be a legal shift in the focus of litigation to inherent federal powers versus state powers. That battle will favor the Trump administration.
In fairness to these Democratic politicians, they are certainly free to go to the courts, as Republicans did under Biden to argue for limitations on federal powers. But the promise of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to “Trump-proof” the state is easier to make rhetorically than it will be to keep legally.
Indeed, Trump will be able to cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. It was Obama who successfully swatted down state efforts to pursue their own policies and programs on immigration enforcement. Obama insisted that state laws were preempted in the area and the Supreme Court largely agreed in its 2012 decision in Arizona v. U.S.
Congress may even seek to tie the receipt of federal funds to states cooperating with federal mandates. For this reason, Democrats, who campaigned on the promise to end the filibuster for the good of democracy, suddenly became firm believers in that Senate rule right around 2:30 a.m. last Wednesday.
As the majority of the country walks away from the party shaking their heads, many activists are left only with their rage. Instead of reappraising the years of far-left orthodoxy and intolerance, some are calling to tear down the system or take drastic individual actions, including for women to break up with their boyfriends and husbands or to cut off their hair.
They will actually keep their rage and dump their relationships. Now that really is an addiction.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
“…there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values….”
Roughly 110 days ago we saw a President described universally by Democrats as sharp as a tack bumble his way through a “debate” to display what most of us knew or at least suspected. Democrat elites dumped him after this performance in what is called a New York minute. Then, they promoted a candidate no one liked and proceeded to fall in love with her as a candidate in the next New York minute. We have been subject to endless propaganda by professionals in the so-called news business for four years, but the volume was turned up to 11 since then.
After the election our Democrat family members who are allegedly adults have behaved worse and more immaturely than their 13-15 year-old children — crying and making scenes in public, issuing threats in private. The news personalities are worse. Finally, our political class now swear to engage in more lawfare, nullification, censorship and so on.
One entertains being ruled by such unstable fools at one’s peril. I do not want them to continue on this path for the next four year and take a worse beating in subsequent election. I want them to stop.
Perhaps those of us who for voted for Trump (or against Harris, as the case may be) comprise the true resistance. We ain’t takin’ this caca no more!
“The Roar of the Greasepaint- the Smell of the Crowd.”
The liberal political position is based on the conservative moral position, which is that, as Christians, we must sacrifice ourselves for the welfare of others. The Democrat’s argument is that anyone who has anything should lose it for the sake of those who have little. Christianity is not about merit but rather need. We are to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, give away our possessions and drop money into the collection plate. The Republicans believe all that and then deplore the Democrats for forcing it on everyone. The reason the world is going to hell fast is that everyone agrees on self-sacrifice and taking authority on faith – both secular and spiritual. To change the minds of socialists requires convincing them that the Judeo-Christian moral code is wrong. No wonder they are so hysterical. They oppose self-interest with all their heart. They see profit and success as evil. They see happiness as suspicious.
What this means is that just about nobody believes in the pursuit of happiness which requires selfishness and property. The result is they have what they want, which is self-sacrifice and poverty. See “The Nature of Evil: Centuries of Parasitic Philosophy” on Amazon.
“We are to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, give away our possessions and drop money into the collection plate. The Republicans believe all that.”
And we’re supposed to believe that load of tripe? What percentage of Republicans actually ARE Christians who attend church services. Or Americans in total who attend church. I think it’s less than 30%.
And the agnostics, the atheists, the animists, etc… they agree that’s what they believe?
The tenants of Christian faith for devout Catholics Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi… how’s their battle to win federal power to force all states to provide abortions up to the moment of birth going?
For the allegedly Christian Republicans, how carefully did you select what they do and do not adopt from Christianity? How about “those who shall not work shall not eat”? Or “He who is without a sword should sell his cloak and buy one”?
There is something spectacularly amusing in all of this!
Democrats denied and readily moved on from Joe Biden’s plagiarism, multiple lies and embellishments, wheelin’ and dealin’ family finances, “misappropriation” of classified documents (along with a complaisant DOJ that found him too feeble to be found culpable but nonetheless capable of the Presidency for another year), protection of family crime, and incredible self-promotion…
indeed, they have practically canonized him as a saint……….
but they just. cannot. let. go. of their rage over Trump.
I’m all for redemption, forgiveness and giving entities second chances. However, contrition comes beforehand. Until then, laughing at them is warranted. The longer they wait to ask for forgiveness, the more intense is the Schadenfreude.
Oct 4: FACT CHECK: Trump’s False Claims About the Federal Response to Hurricane Helene
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/politics/trump-helene-fema-fact-check.html
Nov 9: FEMA Fires Employee for Telling Milton Relief Workers to Skip Houses With Trump Signs
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/us/fema-trump-signs.html
The left has no stock of honest contrition to draw upon, so, as far as I am concerned, they are SOL if looking for sympathy.
Lin,
Good observation. And yet the claim anyone who voted for Trump is in a cult. We are not the ones calling to separate themselves from friends and family, like cults do.
Whether there was fraud in 2020 will never be possible to prove, but the discrepancy between the popular votes in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 suggests that 2020 was a rather unique election. In 2008, Obama go 69.5 million votes, McCain 59.9 million, a total of 129.4 million. In 2012, Obama won 65.9 million votes, Romney 60.1, a total of 126.0 million, three million fewer than in 2008. In 2016, Trump won 63.0 million, Clinton 65.8, a total of 128.8, almost three million more than 2012, but still fewer than 2008. But in 2020, Biden won 81.3 million, Trump 74.2, a total of 155.5, an increase of 26.7 million, with Trump gaining 11.2 million more than he had in 2016 and Biden obtaining 15.5 than Clinton. At the time, those who suggested there had been massive fraud pointed both to Trump’s count, which oustripped Obama’s highest vote count by 4.7 million, and to Biden’s, which did so by 11.8 million. In 2024, Trump received 74.6 million votes, 400,000 more than in 2020, Harris 71.4 at the latest count, a total of 146.0 million, 10.5 million fewer than in 2020, a decrease which suggests that whatever had led to the high turnout in 2020 no longer was operative.
For those who believe 2020 was a ‘free and fair’ election, the dramatic drop in the total votes cast from 2020 to 2024 shows either that Trump is tremendously popular, those who voted for him had been duped, or Oprah and Beyonce cannot win an election for a lackluster candidate burdened with the policies of her party.
For those who believe 2020 was rigged, the drop in total votes cast suggests that Trump the Democrats cheated in 2020, especially given that turnout was 66.8 percent of eligible voters, higher than the 63.6 and 61.8 percent turnouts in 2008 and 2012, when Obama was running, and the 61.4 percent in 2016 when Trump was first elected.
For the editors of the Babylon Bee it suggested a headline: https://babylonbee.com/news/4d-chess-democrats-admit-trump-actually-won-in-2020-and-is-now-unable-to-serve-third-term
JT says over and over, the cure for bad speech is more speech.
What if he’s wrong?
How does truth compete with a firehose of lies?
What if people prefer order, even draconian order, to truth?
How does that make truth and fairness prosper?
I forget who said it, but, paraphrasing, if Trump is re-elected, we will have a mental health crisis, of huge proportions. I submit, it was already raging. It’s just that it will be more visible now.
Well the Republicans will have, hopefully, both houses of congress, the White House and a Supreme Court that is likely to support many of their programs. The MSM has been largely discredited and is in the process of eviscerating itself. The obscene scenes of wailing on the screen probably did as much damage to the MSM as their rotten character and their outright lies. What normal person is going to believe anything from an MSM partisan who cries on screen.
Also the character of Trump’s picks are likely to be totally different from 2016 and profoundly harder edged. No Jeff Sessions as AG. Likely a mass of firings (excuse me – retirements ) in the military and a whole reordering of the intelligence industry with some clearcut guidelines as to who they serve (or else). I would not be adverse to pursuing criminal charges in the bureaucracy if it is there . Also the Federal Government can add by subtracting a great deal of deadwood from the executive departments. I would like to see a lot of moving vans all around the greater D.C. area on an outbound trajectory.
The sudden changes in the relationships with other nations has been profound and the sudden almost rational statements of Hamas and Hezbullah, China and Russia are interesting. As is the EU.
My only other suggestions for the new President is to treat New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California like Iran. Appeal to the long suffering people primarily and only send legal tomahawk missiles to their state governments.
“The obscene scenes of wailing on the screen probably did as much damage to the MSM as their rotten character and their outright lies. What normal person is going to believe anything from an MSM partisan who cries on screen.” GEB, one could reasonably say “normal” people haven’t watched or read Legacy Media for a very long time. It’s the reason only their own thrown-sniffing admirers watched them weep while everyone else caught the replays and memes.
We want DEMOCRACY, unless we are the minority
—-Modern Marxist Libturds
One of the first laws Congress should make, is that it is a FEDERAL CRIME to fail to notify ICE of the detention of an illegal alien for ANY crime, and a FELONY to release someone with an active ICE detainer.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH—-Jocely Nungary and Laken Riley
I think it is already illegal and that hundreds of Biden administration bureaucrats are guilty.
8 U.S. Code § 1324 – Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
US Code
Notes
Authorities (CFR)
prev | next
(a)Criminal penalties
(1)
(A)Any person who—
(i)knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United Statesin any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United Statesand regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii)knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii)knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv)encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
(v)
(I)engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or
(II)aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
(B)A person who violates subparagraph (A) shall, for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs—
(i)in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i) or (v)(I) or in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), or (iv) in which the offense was done for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both;
(ii)in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both;
(iii)in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) during and in relation to which the person causes serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to, or places in jeopardy the life of, any person, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both; and
(iv)in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) resulting in the death of any person, be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, fined under title 18, or both.
This time the machine will be Trumps.
Trump’s policy of “mass deportation” appears to be a focus of these attacks. They can be disarmed by stating clearly that the priority will be to remove those who have already received judicial deportation orders, reported to be about 1.3 million, and to accelerate the process of obtaining similar orders for those who have been convicted of serious crimes. To the extent they can identify “got aways” and those on the terrorist watch list, they could be prioritised as well. This is enough to occupy most of Trump’s term, and it would be a political winner. Most of the voting public would see this as reasonable, and any resistance to it as extreme.
Alonzo Pierre Mingo, shot and killed 3 people in their home, Minnesota, aslo shot a fourth (his own daughter).
He had previously been arrested on FELONY gun charges. When he was released, there was an ICE detainer on him, which was IGNORED by the local authorities.
Instead of being deported, he killed 3 innocent people.
But the libturds worry about who will pick the crops.
“there was an ICE detainer on him, which was IGNORED by the local authorities. ”
I would absolutely love to see qualified immunity rescinded for situations like this, so that those local authorities could be charged and tried as accessories before the fact to homicide. They deserve no better.
Yes, that is a beginning. But 12-20 million arrived illegally in the past 3.5 years, added to the 25-30 million that were already here. That’s enough to change the demographics and culture of a Nation in one generation. I’m sorry – they have to go home. Self deport – make it too hard to stay – their native countries need them to build their own country up. They’ve lived in America, learned the good and bad way to do things, learned new trades and jobs – it’s time for them to go home and bring that wealth and knowledge with them to also make their native country’s great again.
…I have followed your posts for years now, Professor. How about some commentary on this: thedocuments.info
Excellent piece. I believe in egalitarianism – live and let live, and after spending a great deal of time trying to give the benefit of the doubt I have to agree with other posters – these people are crazy; Patty Hearst or Charles Manson were perfectly rational by comparison for some of them. We can’t go any further down that road and expect anything to be ok. I don’t think most will stand for it anymore, and hopefully that makes the madness all the more starkly apparent.
“there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values just because they lost this election“
These people have no values, they’re delusional and suffer mentally. They’ve been literally hypnotized by those who wish to stay in power and profit by their elected position and I mean money. I wish a snap of the fingers would waken them to reality but I fear many may suffer lifelong. The easiest cure for the new resistance will be to make an example of the strongest in the group, no quarter. We have to get the nation and all Americans up and running again.
We have to ignore the majority to protect The Democracy, I mean democracy. Wait, what?
Left Wing DEMS, Main Street Media, Globalist, Soros will try to resist But, as Jonthan mentioned, Trump won populist and electoral college. He won with support of voters from traditional DEM groups. The people spoke, they are tired of the DEMS lawfare, radical policies, crime, poor economy etc. The DEMS helped Trump by their lawfare allowing the Courts to set rulings against the DEMS efforts, such as immigration, Boders etc. If the DEMS want to appeal to there exvoters and the groups they lost they should change their whole leadership and Radical policies, but they will not and will continue to lose elections. End their censorship, control, crazy Left-Wing policies etc. The DEMS need to due a clean sweep, Pelosi, Shumer, Jefferies, Lawerence Tribe lawfare, Soros, Raskin, Never Trumpers etc. must go
Those that continue down this path of “resistance” will find they will extend the America First Governance through perpetuity!!!! If they didn’t notice, every time they Indicted DJT his support increased exponentially…..
I would have thought that the Left would have learned, this time around, the lessons that Hillary skipped right after the 2016 election: we had an awful candidate, ran a terrible campaign and were simply out-hustled. Silly me. Look for the Trump administration to not even bothering to respond to the people in the street this time around, preferring instead to go full-steam ahead to implement their mandate, especially in the next 24 months before the mid-terms.
They’ve proven they are incapable of learning.
I have a Cumbaya leftist sister – peace signs and Tibetian prayer flags all over the house- but we can not even barely touch on the subject of politics and I have not yet heard from her after the election. She hides behind the peace BS to absolutely loathe DJT. Mind you this is a 72 year old women with a master degree and is a therapist (Bet she is swamped!) My brother is an open hater and every time I would read about someone scaling the WH fence, etc I would honestly look for the name of the person to see if it was my brother. He of course, like me, was a staunch liberal in the 60’s and 70’s who hated Big Brother, who now IS Big Brother and embraces all of its ideology. I no longer refer to them as liberals- they are leftists totalitarians but still think of themselves as liberal. We did not talk or write all year after the 2020 election, (mainly because of a group family text in which one of the lefties asked how anyone could support Trump) but he sent me this lengthy email on the 2021 anniversary of J6 to make me answer his nutso email , that I denounced violence. He’s nuts. Too much acid in the 70’s and too much weed now. I of course, held my tongue and did not ask him to denounce the actions of Antifa during the Summer of Love. These people are certifiably crazy.
Sorry to hear. Cases of arrested development are hard to crack. As the old saying goes, “you cannot reason people out of things they were not reasoned into.”
Unfortunately many families and friends are in the same boat and it’s actually getting worse as I can attest to with my family and to a lesser extent friends
Sad, and I can relate. I too am at odds with family due to political differences, and I’m of your generation. I hope this isn’t a widespread phenomenon, but I suspect it is.
Curious. You mentioned: “She hides behind the peace BS to absolutely loathe DJT.” How ironic. Based strictly on ‘peace’, Trump should be the only possible choice among all presidential candidates of the past 50 years! I guess you can’t fix ‘nuts’.
Peace!
– John Underwood
Tyler, TX
@scpatriot1956
My brother has terminal TDS, too. I really believe he’d never harm anyone physically, but he’s been well and truly brainwashed. I think a lot of the more unhinged folks are abusing substances or at the least, as in my brother’s case, on strong medications. Seems to be a common thread. It’s all very sad.
I find it no coincidence that such a high percentage of libturds are being treated for various mental ilnesses.