The fascist tide in the United States is moving so fast it is difficult to keep up with it.
Spending what feels like the appropriate amount of time trying to digest what is happening, and figuring out what can be done about it, can be extremely deleterious to mental health and overall well-being. And yet, if you care about democracy, the rule of law, and even the role of the US in the world as we abandon our allies and embrace despots, then the urge to do something doesn’t go away.
I am stuck in a state where my Congressman and my two Senators are all in on Trumpism and where the state government is, if possible, even more willing to pursue an authoritarian brand of fascism. Our state legislature, as but one example, recently passed legislation that would make it a felony for local elected officials to vote on immigration in ways that Trump disapproves of. So, there really isn’t much I can manage to do at the moment beyond using my relatively meager public platform to continue to oppose and resist.
The continuing turmoil in the US Department of Justice is just one thread in the unraveling of our nation’s fundamental ideals, but it is an important one, particularly if you are a lawyer. There is a battle being waged between two kinds of lawyers currently serving the United States.
On one side, lawyers who are willing to do the bidding of a felon with a long history of racist behavior, authoritarian impulses, and a fundamentally corrupt approach to both business and politics. On the other side, lawyers who understand that their role as an attorney for the United States amounts to something more than simply being the personal lawyer of such a person.
The problem, right now, with the way that battle is playing out, is that the lawyers not on the side of fascism have little power to fight the lawyers willing to do Trump’s bidding. Currently, it appears that resigning before being fired and getting their reasons for resigning out into the public sphere is the only available weapon.
For much of the last week or so, one of these battles played out with news of a parade of US Attorneys in New York resigning rather than helping implement a corrupt bargain between Trump and the indicted Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. These lawyers, who include not just Republicans but Federalist Society members, resigned with blistering written communications about why they were doing so in hopes that someone might stop what was happening. You’ve likely read some of those letters already, but, if not, you can read one of them here and another one of them here.
More recently, news has come out that a DC DOJ attorney has also resigned over this situation, but the reports appear to indicate that they were forced to do so. That forced resignation is the responsibility of the unhinged acting US Attorney for Washington, D.C., who I have previously written about recently. This same lawyer is the guy who has written such screeds as this in a letter to Elon Musk, and now has bizarrely threatened to investigate Chuck Schumer over opposition as a sitting U.S. Senator to the administration.
If it were not clear that the fight between these two kinds of lawyers is not going to be fought on even ground in this instance or any more to come, this additional bit of news should leave no doubt.
Reducing what was an apolitical process for dealing with attorney ethics issues, employment matters, and providing information to Congress and Inspectors General down to something to be decided by an extremely partisan attorney who served as one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys and a likely mostly unqualified attorney pretty much preordains that all questions will be answered only in a way that the man who is willing to publicly refer to himself as a “King,” demands.
It is still possible that federal judges may be able to stave off some of the absolute worst consequences of what will happen when the quislings are the only attorneys left in positions of power in the DOJ, but the fact that The House of Representatives has already begun the process of threatening to impeach any federal judge that stands in Trump’s way is not a great sign of things to come.
And, perhaps even worse, while I was finishing this post, the Senate confirmed a man who has publicly declared that January 6 was something done by the FBI as the new head of the FBI.