Two ideas I heard from TPM Readers today:

The first is from TPM Reader BT, who recommends that big cities hold military occupation referendums. Needless to say these would not constrain President Trump. But they would make clear what the population of the city wants. I think it’s a really good idea. You need to think outside the box.

The second is from TPM Reader JB. He asks whether courts could begin holding Zoom hearings for people at risk of getting picked up by ICE at the courthouse. For immigration hearings and check-ins this is a nonstarter since President Trump controls that process. But I see no reason why true Article 3 courts couldn’t do something like that. That doesn’t mean they will of course. But it’s an idea worth raising.

I’m by no means the first one to note this. But it’s so important that I want to make sure it’s at the top of your mind. Have you noticed that out of the blue all of Donald Trump’s enemies seem to be getting investigated for mortgage fraud? Letitia James, Adam Schiff and now Fed Board member Lisa Cook; and it’s the pretext for her purported firing by President Trump?

Well, it turns out there’s a reason. Bill Pulte is Trump’s Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an agency created as part of the Global Financial Crisis reforms. From that post he finagled his way into being the head of Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae, the quasi public institutions which back a huge percentage of American home and student loans.

We’re seeing lots of news today about the occupation of Washington, D.C. and the president’s takeover of the Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department, as well as clear signals that he plans to expand this program to other big blue-state cities. I want to step back from the particulars to try to see the situation as a whole and consider the political ways to react to it. This builds on the point that grew out of my conservation with a TPM Reader a week and a half ago which is that the narrow issues of legality are mostly beside the point — not irrelevant, but at best secondary. The president views states and municipalities controlled by political opponents as something akin to conquered territories which must be bent to his will by force. This includes budgetary coercion and as close as he can get to military occupation. This is un-American, outside the constitutional order and, not least in importance, unpopular.

He has done this by exploiting various loopholes, taking advantage of a compliant and corrupt Supreme Court and resorting to expedients in which his power is most un-reviewable despite his actions clearly violating the plain intention of the laws in question. None of these technicalities change the fact that these are all violations of the liberties Americans are entitled to.