{"id":805,"date":"2025-03-20T14:16:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T18:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=805"},"modified":"2025-03-20T14:16:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T18:16:56","slug":"its-up-to-us-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2025\/03\/20\/its-up-to-us-now\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Up to Us Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time in America when congresspersons in both parties would join hands to impeach any president who intentionally disobeyed a court order, but not any longer. Not with this MAGA Congress. Not with Donald Trump in charge.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that Trump purposefully disobeyed a court order when a judge ordered him to return airplanes carrying Venezuelan deportees to a U.S. contracted prison in El Salvador and the planes kept flying. Later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to mock the judge when he reposted a message from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele who said, \u201cOopsie — Too late.\u201d The message appeared along with a laughing emoji.<\/p>\n

Trump himself even called the judge, James E. Boasberg, a \u201cRadical Left Lunatic\u201d in a social media post and said he should be impeached, but Justice John G. Roberts Jr. quickly slapped that down, telling him in a rare public put-down that \u201cimpeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has claimed that the order came too late, that the order had to be printed before it could take effect, that the judge\u2019s jurisdiction does not extend beyond U.S. borders, that the courts do not have the authority to tell the president what to do, et cetera.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s claim that courts have no authority over him is rubbish, and Trump certainly did purposefully violate a court order. So what should happen now, according to the law, is that the judge must hold Trump and subsidiary officials in civil contempt. The Supreme Court must affirm that finding, but once it\u2019s affirmed U.S. law says Trump could never be pardoned.<\/p>\n

In normal times, the next step in the process would be for Congress to impeach Trump and remove him from office. But these are not normal times, and as long as Trump owns our cowardly Congress, it ain\u2019t gonna happen.<\/p>\n

So, since the GOP-controlled Congress will not impeach Trump, the duty to protect our democracy falls to us, We the People. In a democracy, all power derives from the consent of the governed, and we grant that consent only upon good behavior of the grantees. We are the governed, and Trump\u2019s inexcusable behavior makes it mandatory that we withdraw that consent. We must join our brothers and sisters in other nations who are facing the same problems and engage in mass demonstrations, national strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience until he is gone.<\/p>\n

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently warned of Trump\u2019s ominous dangers, and added, \u201cIf you think I\u2019m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I\u2019m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, Trump reached that Nazi timeline around March 11.)<\/p>\n

Gov. Pritzker chose Hitler as a perfect example. Remember how Trump used to study Hitler\u2019s instructions on how to become a dictator, lock them away in a bedside cabinet every night, and now that he\u2019s in office again he is religiously living by that advice. And it is succeeding. Look at him. The American Fuhrer.<\/p>\n

He calls himself a king, but he\u2019s following in Hitler\u2019s footsteps so closely he can only be described as a Fuhrer. Hitler tried to create a master race by packing Jews into rail cars and sending them to furnaces, and although Trump is not doing that, he\u2019s doing the opposite. He\u2019s taking food and medical care away from millions of people around the world and across America, including children, many of whom will die, all so his white male billionaire buddies will get more money.<\/p>\n

Trump is even loudly advertising what a beyond-belief white-supremacist racist he is. He may as well be putting on a white sheet and hood. Erin Alberty of Axios reported that Trump\u2019s administration removed from U.S. military websites at least ten articles about the World War II Code Talkers, the Indigenous People without whom the Marines never could have taken Iwo Jima.<\/p>\n

Alberty also found that web pages associated with the Department of Defense are missing, pages that honored prominent Black veterans, women who served in the military, including the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II. A profile of Army Major General Charles Rogers, who received the Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam, was similarly changed, but the Defense Department replaced the missing page and removed \u201cdei\u201d from the URL after a public outcry. The Arlington National Cemetery website has deleted content about Black, female and Hispanic veterans.<\/p>\n

The erasure of Indigenous, Black, female and Hispanic veterans from our military history is Trump\u2019s attempt to elevate white men as the sole actors in our history. It is also an attempt to erase a vision of a nation in which Americans of all backgrounds come together to work\u2014and fight\u2014for the common good.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s what\u2019s happening right now. Bad days are certainly ahead of us, but we\u2019ve done the impossible before and this is only doing the tough.<\/p>\n

And as far as Trump\u2019s grip on our government goes, good things are happening that should boost our spirits.<\/p>\n

For one thing, Trump\u2019s tariffs blitz appears to be backfiring. He imposed tariffs on products from countries around the world, and those countries are responding with tariffs of their own, all specifically designed to hit red states the hardest. The New York Times figured that nearly 8 million Americans work in industries targeted by those tariffs, and the majority are Trump voters. Republicans in those states are blistering their representatives at town hall meetings.<\/p>\n

Another thing, federal courts have been doing their thing well. They\u2019ve opposed Trump and Musk over and over. Courts move slowly by design, but they\u2019re doing everything they can to stop him. It remains to be seen what will happen when those cases pile into the Supreme Court, but that\u2019s a concern for tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Canadians are registering their distaste for Trump in several ways. They are spending their travel money in other countries, costing the U.S. tourism industry billions of dollars, and stripping their shelves of American-made liquors and wines. Other businesspeople don\u2019t know how to plan because of Trump\u2019s forever-changing tariff actions. Prices are up. The Stock Market is down.<\/p>\n

He’s even alienating his ideological allies in Europe. France\u2019s extreme-right Marine Le Pen denounced his freeze on aid to Ukraine as \u201creprehensible and cruel.\u201d Anders Vistisen, a member of the far-right Danish People\u2019s Party, wasn\u2019t so nice. Speaking on the floor of the European Parliament about Trump\u2019s stated plans to take over part of Greenland, which has been part of the Danish government for 800 years, Vistisen said, \u201cLet me put it in terms you might understand, Mr. Trump. Fuck Off!\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this is adding up to Trump\u2019s plummeting popularity, which will lead politicians, sooner or later, to abandon him to save their own political lives. Maybe they\u2019ll impeach him after all.<\/p>\n

That becomes a stronger possibility because now here we come, We the People, in ever-growing numbers, newly rebalanced and filled with fresh energy, clear purpose and righteous anger. We will not be denied. We will not be bullied. We will not give up. We will demonstrate, strike, boycott and be civilly disobedient wherever and whenever we can. We know what to do and we will do it. We are doing it. Whatever it takes. And we will win.<\/p>\n

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