Plotting to Deny the People's Will
Trump may be weighing emergency powers to suppress the vote. "We're going to stop it," he says of fabricated cheating. We cannot be complacent.
We cannot underestimate what we are up against.
Tony Dokoupil, anchor of the CBS Evening News, a once-legendary institution which provided reliable journalistic coverage, responded to Donald Trump’s State of the Union Tuesday night by calling it “extraordinary” and “historic” and “vintage Trump.” In so doing, he offered additional evidence of the Bari Weiss-led network’s kowtowing to Trump—and the dangerous failure of too many legacy media outlets who are serving up business-as-usual coverage, thereby aiding and abetting the anti-democratic regime.
That same evening, most of the members of the gold-medal-winning men’s U.S. hockey team tarnished their achievement and its power to unify the nation by attending the speech as Trump’s guests after meeting him earlier in the day at the White House. Their participation signals support for his lawless authoritarian regime, be it consciously or foolishly. (It should be noted that five players chose not to attend, including four who were born or grew up in Minnesota. Likewise, the gold medal-winning women’s hockey team declined an invitation.)
Note the comments of Jack Hughes, who scored the winning goal for the American team in overtime. “Everything is so political. We’re athletes,” he said the day before. “When you get the chance to go to the White House and meet the president, we’re proud to be Americans and that’s so patriotic. No matter what your views are, we’re super excited to go to the White House tomorrow and be a part of that.”
In normal times, those sentiments from the 24-year-old New Jersey Devils player would be perfectly reasonable, even uplifting and unifying. But we are not living in normal times.
This hateful regime has worked aggressively to dismantle our democratic institutions; murdered American citizens in broad daylight and lied that they were domestic terrorists; sent masked men to grab people off the street and deport them without due process; illegally protected Trump from accountability even as he’s referenced over a million times in the files of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; and now are plotting to deny the will of the people in November’s midterm elections.
“We have to stop it, John”
These are not small things, simply differing views on politics. These are actions that strike at the heart of what Americans have fought and died for throughout our nation’s history. That heart is still beating, but it is put in jeopardy by corporate journalists who minimize the danger of Trump and his criminal regime and athletes who support or fail to grasp the deadly dangerous place Trump wants to further drag America.
These fascistic dangers have been knowable for years. These fascistic realities have become increasingly visible from day one of this second Trump term.
While Trump’s State of the Union speech was notable for its sadism and lies, it’s also important to recognize what he foreshadowed Tuesday night. In his support for the Save America Act, a voter-suppression bill dressed up as a response to the non-existent problem of non-citizens voting, he said, “It's very simple. All voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote. And no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military or travel. None.”
And even as the Senate will likely fail to gather 60 votes to support the legislation—and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will likely refuse to discard the filibuster solely to pass it—Trump described his false justification for a bill that essentially sanctions stealing the election. Taking aim at his perceived Democratic enemies, Trump said, “They want to cheat, they have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat,” before darkly adding, “And we’re going to stop it. We have to stop it, John [Thune].”
“Stopping it” may mean Trump trying to act unilaterally if the legislation fails by claiming emergency powers and trying to override the right of states and local jurisdictions to manage the elections. Trump is telling us that knows he cannot win fairly.
According to an alarming Washington Post report yesterday by Isaac Arnsdorf, a senior White House reporter, “pro-Trump activists” are pushing a 17-page draft of an executive order that urges declaring a national emergency in response to foreign interests interfering in U.S. elections. This would ostensibly empower Trump to ban mail ballots and voting machines as tools of such interference. As Arnsdorf notes, this focus on foreign interference to justify a federal takeover of elections may help explain why Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, was in Georgia during the FBI raid last month to seize ballots from the 2020 election.
“We’ve been raising the alarm for weeks about President Trump’s attacks on our elections and now we’re seeing reports that outline how they may be planning to do it,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told the Post in response to this report. “This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.”
We cannot be complacent
These are not normal times. We cannot be complacent while this regime darkly plots to deny the will of the people. That means working to ensure maximum voter turnout in November, making stealing a close election harder. It also means refusing to blithely tolerate journalists, athletes or any Americans who behave as if our republic is not under siege by a criminal White House occupant who will pursue any means to hold onto power and deny our constitutional rights.
Two-hundred and fifty. That’s how many years our democratic nation has survived since its founding in defiance of a tyrannical king. And that’s how many days we have until the midterm elections to show that we the people will not be denied now.
We cannot be complacent. We cannot be compliant. We cannot stand by leaders who think business-as-usual actions will ensure a democratic outcome. We have to remember there are more of us than there are of them—and our collective power can overcome the regime’s authoritarian agenda.
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One correction: "sent masked men to grab migrants off the street" should be "sent masked men to grab people off the street." ICE is largely indiscriminate and many U.S. citizens have been grabbed.
As always, you are spot on, Steven. As always, you have defined the most pressing problem with great skill and nuance. We don’t need a proverbial club brought down on our heads to know that Trump wants to stop free and fair elections in the interest of his fascist goal to stay in power. What we do need is to know how this could take place…and so understanding the link between the Tulsi Gabbard appearance in Georgia as a false narrative that will link China to the 2020 election results is very important. Thank you for describing this strategy clearly and forthrightly.
How we can stop it is still an open question. I would hate for this move to succeed in checkmating our right…not privilege…to vote. Until each and every American understands that voting is our Constitutional right, I fear this ugly fairy story told by tin foil hat gargoyles will succeed. What we do next as citizens is important. Who ever thought that voting could become a form of protest?