I’ve told you a few times of my difficulty launching the DOJ-in-exile project. Such is life. But there’s another set of actions, much easier to do, not requiring any organization or concerted action, which is just as important. We hear a lot of Trump administration actions decried, denounced and so forth, as they should be. What I would like to hear more clearly is that with this or that criminal or unconstitutional action, the next time Democrats control the government the actions will be reversed and those who acted criminally will be prosecuted. This also applies to bad policy. So, for instance, with the absurd expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democrats should be saying clearly that once they are back in power, that whole expansion is going to be reversed. People signing up for all those new jobs should know that now. Democrats couldn’t reverse those things as long as Trump’s in power and has a veto pen. But they might be able to deny more funding as soon as 2027.
What I’m describing here may simply be implicit for Democratic voters who are optimists about Democrats back in power; it probably yields a few “yeah, sure, Josh” shrugs for the doomer crowd. I make no predictions here about which is more likely. I get the arguments for both. But these things should not remain implicit. It’s critical to make them explicit for several reasons. At the moment, Republicans have all the power. But that’s now. Democrats need to open the dimension of time where Republicans don’t hold all the cards. Indeed, there their hand looks weaker by the day.
The first reason is that it puts people on notice. It may be Justice Department policy now to accept any level of GOP criminal conduct with free grants of impunity. But that won’t always be the case. Your impunity lasts only as long as Donald Trump runs the DOJ. It’s not just crimes. Your no-bid gulag building contract? Get as much of the money as you can while Trump is in office. Good luck without unified GOP control of the federal government. And exactly what you build will become very public in the not too distant future. There is an important, background deterrent effect to doing this.
Another thing is that it puts the opposition party on the record. Just what Democrats can agree on is obviously a matter of opposition politics. It’s clear to me that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a mistake which should be undone. ICE should be abolished and replaced by something more like the Immigration and Naturalization Service that preceded it. At a minimum, though, the mega expansion of ICE happening under Trump II should be undone. Making these things explicit now greatly improves the chances that they will actually come to pass.
The third reason may seem the least concrete, but it is in some ways the most important: it provides the political opposition with a sense of forward trajectory in time. Hope is one way to put it. But it’s not quite that. It’s more firming up an idea of what you’re working towards and fleshing out that it’s an actual place that it’s worth fighting to get to. One of the biggest challenges for the Trump opposition is imagining what comes next. For some, maybe nothing comes next. Maybe this is it. Maybe Trump has already won. But even for those who don’t think in those terms, we’re deep in the pitch black of night with very few sign posts or sentinels for guidance. It’s hard for many people to see what is possible or conceivable beyond triaging the destruction and body blow after body blow indefinitely into the future. You start charting these future steps to paint the picture of what the opposition to Trump is trying to achieve. You make it more real, concrete, plan-able. You start to create a map, which gives people a sense of where they are and where they’re trying to go, allows them to be more grounded, less bewildered.
There’s no time like the present.