https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/what-should-we-do-now-live-with-rev?
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Watch the dialogue
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-should-we-do-now-live-with-rev?
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/what-should-we-do-now-live-with-rev?
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House Republicans just passed their Medicaid-slashing, billionaire-enriching megabill (aka the Republican Tax Scam) in a 215-214 vote. The bill got even worse overnight, and at the end of this email we’ll detail some of its most harmful provisions -- but the most important thing to know right now is this:
This fight isn’t over, and this bill can still be stopped! Even now, as Speaker Johnson and his pals prematurely pop their champagne, we have two clear paths to killing this bill:
Let’s break that all down a bit more.
To start, it’s important to remember that Republicans are using what used to be a fairly unusual legislative maneuver -- reconciliation -- to skirt the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster. To do that, the House and Senate must agree to pass the exact same bill, down to the letter, in both chambers.
But Senate Republicans simply aren’t going to pass the House’s bill without major changes. Vulnerable senators are concerned about draconian cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Others think the cuts should be even more ruthless, or are annoyed at some of the deficit-ballooning deals Johnson had to make to get this thing through the House.
There are no easy fixes for Republican leadership here. The divides are so deep, and the cuts so politically toxic, that we have a real shot at flipping four votes to stop reconciliation in the Senate outright, just like we did in 2017.
Even if a bill does squeak through the Senate, it’ll be significantly different from what the House just voted on. That means another tough round of deal-making, infighting, and politically risky votes for House Republicans -- with no guarantee of success.
MAGA Republicans will be furious that some of their cuckoo, extremist ideas got stripped out.
Swing-seat Republicans will be furious they need to vote twice to cut Medicaid and SNAP -- especially if the Senate strips out special concessions Johnson promised to secure their yes votes in the first place.
And Trump will be furious he’s not simply getting his way, instantly and unquestioningly.
If that happens -- and if we keep relentless pressure on vulnerable Republicans -- the bill may never pass the House a second time.Getting it across the finish line in one chamber took a herculean effort. Passing it again, with two chambers involved and weeks of additional pressure, will be even harder.
Whether we stop the reconciliation bill in the Senate or in the House, there’s no doubt we can still win this fight! But we’ll need to ratchet up pressure on Republicans in both chambers right now.
You can also use this tool to send them an email.
If you have Democratic Members of Congress, you don't need to make a call because Democrats are standing strong against this bill, but to join the fight in a different way, please chip in to fund our work toxifying this bill in some of the most narrowly divided Republican districts in America.
Congressional Republicans need to hear from us right now, but calling and emailing is just the first of many ways that Indivisibles like you will keep fighting this bill.
As we roll out more events, outreach campaigns, volunteer opportunities and other pressure tactics, we’ll let you know exactly what you can do to beat this bill and stop the cuts. Please stay tuned, and thanks for being with us in this fight.
In solidarity,
Indivisible Team
Weaponization of Justice.
Timothy Snyder May 20, 2025.
Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump's attempted regime change to authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a tool to intimidate Americans. After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue his work for Trump as the official "weaponization czar."
This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. Martin was originally placed on the "weaponization working group" seemingly ex officiowhen he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On Martin's account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be "no limit to the targets."
…..
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weaponization-czar?
Timothy Snyder.
It is happening as we read.
The important question is, what are we going to do about it?
Posted by Duane Campbell
Trump recently told an interviewer he didn’t know whether the Constitution required him to uphold due process rights of noncitizens. He also lamented the extraordinary burden of providing individual hearings for millions of immigrants marked for deportation.
He said on Truth Social that “our Court System is not letting me do the job I was Elected to do. Activist judges must let the Trump Administration deport murderers, and other criminals who have come into our Country illegally, WITHOUT DELAY!!!”
Trump adviser Stephen Miller rails almost daily against what he calls a “judicial coup” of rulings upholding the due process rights of immigrants. Miller scoffs at the notion that people Trump claims are “terrorists” must be allowed to contest their deportations, saying they only have the right to be deported.
Miller has also raised the specter of suspending the right to habeas corpus — the age-old right to challenge being taken into custody in the first place.
Federal judges have been pushing back — requiring that the regime accord due process to people facing deportation.
Last month, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident with protected status who was wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran detention facility. In that decision, the court said with one voice that Abrego Garcia should have been given the opportunity to challenge his detention and deportation.
Here are four things you should know:
1. The Constitution clearly guarantees “due process” to all “person[s].” The Constitution’s 5th Amendment says “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The word “person” makes no distinction between citizens and noncitizens. (The 14th Amendment makes this applicable to the states as well.)
2. The Supreme Court has long held that this promise extends to immigrants in deportation proceedings. In a 1993 opinion, Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, Justice Antonin Scalia — hardly a left-wing extremist — wrote that “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
3. Due process doesn’t always require a full trial, however. At the least, immigrants facing deportation are entitled to:
(1) notice of the charges against them (the government must provide an immigrant with a charging document, often called a “notice to appear,” outlining the reasons for potential deportation).
(2) The opportunity to present evidence before an immigration judge to show why they should not be deported (e.g., asylum, student visa, green card, cancellation of removal).
(3) A judgment based on the facts of the case and applicable immigration law.
(4) the right to appeal the decision to a higher court.
4. The right to habeas corpus is fundamental to our legal system. Defandents have used habeas corpus to challenge detentions by government officials since 13th-century England and the Magna Carta. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 84, “The subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”
Hence, the framers provided in the U.S. Constitution that the writ of habeas corpus, carried over from British law, “shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Needless to say, we are not now experiencing rebellion or invasion. Moreover, despite what Miller suggests, the authority to suspend the writ is placed in Article I, which outlines the powers of Congress, and not Article II, which lists those of the executive branch.
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Some judges have warned that the Trump regime’s efforts to deny immigrants due process could easily expand to other groups, including American citizens.
What happens if ICE decides that the definition of an “American citizen” doesn’t apply to someone who has spoken out against the regime, for example? What happens if habeas corpus is suspended and all Americans are in danger of arbitrary punishment?
A growing number of jurists have framed this fight as existential for all Americans’ fundamental rights, not just those of immigrants. They’re right.
Robert Reich
We are all in this together.
What does the Republican-led Congress’s 10-year budget propose to do? It would harm the most vulnerable, including:
It would also protect the rich and harm people here and abroad, including:
We need to reach all of our federal officials—not just to stop the cuts but to demand an expanded social safety net that lifts from the bottom and allows all of us to thrive, not struggle to survive.
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It may be impossible to mentally survive the onslaught of these times if you track every piece of news. The actions under the Trump/Musk regime are a barrage: rolling back civil rights, watching government run by idiots, every institution weaponized, and dystopian spectacle passed off as governance. The sheer velocity can numb the senses, tempting us to shut down, to turn off the feed, to retreat.
But you also cannot be good to the world — or yourself — if you keep your head down and pay attention to nothing. Withdrawal is understandable, even necessary at times—but permanent disengagement only cedes ground to the authoritarian momentum as it reinforces our image of ourselves as powerless. So: How do we observe what’s happening without being crushed by its weight?
This is where the work of social psychologist Kurt Lewin offers a powerful tool. Lewin, a Jewish intellectual who fled Nazi Germany, developed force field analysis to understand how power, behavior, and transformation occur in real social systems.
He saw that any given situation is held in place by a dynamic equilibrium between forces pushing for change and those resisting it. To shift the status quo, you don’t necessarily need to move everything at once—you can focus strategically on specific forces or actors that influence the whole.
In activist training, I was taught force field analysis thusly: you make a list of forces and organizations pushing towards the dreary authoritarian oligarchy-controlled vision. And then the list of forces pushing towards a reordered society that’s deeply democratic and where wealth is shared.
Those forces are in tension. Pushing towards authoritarianism, Trump’s FBI ordered the arrest of a state judge for allegedly trying to prevent ICE from detaining a man in her courtroom.
But then the judges, lawyers, and plaintiffs who are defeating Trump 93% of the time in court because his orders are sloppy and patently illegal. And notably, most of the time Trump’s regime has quietly followed the judge’s orders.
Pushing the other direction, Trump’s deportation of people to El Salvadoran prison and open defiance of the courts. And the Supreme Court temporarily upholding Trump’s cruelly-written ban on trans people in the military.
But then there’s Harvard standing up to Trump’s intimidation tactics — alongside a growing body of universities organizing in resistance. To add: Harvard wanted to make a deal but veered towards resistance because of Trump’s henchmen being so casually reckless — so their stupidity works in our favor.
Yes, but all authoritarians promote loyalty above competence. And Trump is still fighting Harvard, and trying to take over museums, too.
Sure, but have you met librarians? They are not going down without a fight. They’ve refused, rebuffed, and redoubled efforts to give people the facts.
It’s worth pausing here to note our feelings in these tense times. Many days it’s easy to ask “Are we winning? Are we losing?” Like a basketball game, many of us do a kind of score keeping about how many points are we down? But, just to walk further into the sports analogy, this is more like soccer — where a lot of the game isn’t about immediate scoring but about positioning, repositioning, quick advances, quick retreats. Progress may not always be visible or immediate, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
A Colombian elder — who has lived her whole life in the shadow of war — told me recently, “You USers are obsessed with winning and it’s very unhealthy in moments like this. You keep wanting to know if it’s going well or not — and these times can’t be analyzed in headlines or moments. Sometimes it just is what it is. It’s losing and winning. The yardstick is measured in hearts and the timeline is generations of work on people’s attitudes and views.”
Lewin’s brilliance was in recognizing that seeing the whole doesn’t mean acting on everything. So we begin to paint the picture of what’s out there and the different forces at play. Forces for good. Forces against. And some forces that are mixed. Crucially, in his analysis you then assess which of these forces can be strengthened or weakened.
And here it’s helpful to get pretty practical. Courage anywhere begets courage everywhere. Because Trump has picked a strategy of everywhere all at once — nearly every group has a chance to stand up and support each other to be more bold. Hundreds of nonprofits signing to support Harvard fighting for its nonprofit status. Lawyers taking the street to do a most unusual thing: retaking their oaths to the Constitution in public. Employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — as elsewhere — attempting “work-on without collaboration” where they resisted unauthorized access by DOGE but continue their important work.
In practical terms, this might mean focusing not on Musk or Trump directly, but on amplifying local election protections, funding investigative journalism, or supporting tech workers organizing against misuse of platforms. You don’t need to tackle the entire regime to weaken its foundation. You need leverage points—clear, concrete places to act.
Using Lewin’s tool helps prevent burnout. It turns despair into direction. It gives structure to what might otherwise feel like flailing.
So, yes: these are hard days. But it’s not all bad or good — it’s a force field in motion. Even small acts, strategically placed, can shift the balance. We are not powerless — we are participants.
In closing, a quote from some of the resistance park rangers calling themselves Alt Acadia National Park:
A quick experiment for you. Go out to the store and buy a set of legos. Drop one on the floor, preferably in a high traffic area of your house, and forget about it. The inevitable will happen and you will eventually step on it. How do you feel about the power of that one lego brick? It’s only one brick.…
Another nice thing about lego bricks is that you can stack them, build with them. Create something more than the sum of their parts. One becomes two becomes three becomes 70,000+ Junior Rangers moving together, empowering each other, and making a difference. We’ll be here with you all the way, building a better future.
One lego brick at a time.
NYT call for a united front to defend democracy.
