A historic day

But not a victory. A red line in the growing wave of blue resistance.

(Note: This is a longer post than I’d planned. Maybe get some tea or wine, run a bath, settle back. It wasn’t planned. But some days, the words seize the tongue. - ac)

12.4.24. Forty-six days to go.

One month, plus 16 days, to be precise. Then the official start of the much-feared “Day One” deluge of anticipated Executive Orders, roll-backs of safety rules and climate treaties and regulations, and possibly even a release of names of who are the first targets of a revenge Trump 2.0 administration. I personally don’t think that last item will happen on that first day, but there could well be an order calling for a DOJ investigation or naming a Special Prosecutor to begin holding hearings to dig into all the people Trump and Project 2025 view as enemies to be punished, the future un-Americans. We should definitely expect this.

I am seeing a greater degree of concern and sobering awareness, not exactly fear, creeping up among journalists who write about Trump and the carnival barker show of his new Cabinet choices. I wonder what journo colleagues like Amy Goodman are thinking, if she’s worried that she or her colleague Juan Gonzales or Democracy Now will face a censorship axe soon. What about my old pal Rachel Maddow? MSNBC has lost half their readership since the election. Dang. People are burned out on news; they need a break from politics. How is she thinking about what’s ahead? She’s protected by her fame and a big media outfit. They have a lot of lawyers. But what’s going to happen? Is Elon Musk going to buy MSNBC? What would happen to Rachel then? Or will Leonard Leo, the Catholic kingmaker behind Project 2025 and so much of what is unfolding now, beat Elon to it? He has one million dollars ready to buy a major media property this year.

The right wing has learned a key lesson of autocracy, then: take control of the media. Control the message. They’re going beyond Fox News. It’s part of the autocracy playbook. Look at Viktor Orban. He put his cronies in charge of Hungary’s media stations then took control. The dominoes are falling here. Last night I was reading about a journo strike at The Guardian, a historically great paper now facing an ownership crisis that could sink it. Another right-wing deep pockets billionaire being invited to correct course, who might put right-wing people in charge, fire the pesky investigative reporters who keep knocking down Trump’s choices for Cabinet. And this follows the cowardly actions of the billionaire owners of the Washington Post -- Jeff Bezos – and LA Times – Patrick Soon-Shing – who refused to endorse a presidential candidate for fear of Trump’s wrath. We are in new days, indeed.

Images: Shutterstock

I think about this even for the work I do, which is not writing in a legacy mainstream publication, but a Substack. I’m documenting the resistance. I’m smaller fry, compared to so many bigger targets. But anyone who is a journalist or calling out Trump 2.0 criminality or corruption is likely allowing themselves the consider the thought. What are we going to face in the future?

We allow the thought to rise, bubble around in our brains. We think about whether we should get second passports or make any Plan B preparations for a future life in exile, if it came to that. But we aren’t in that moment, and I know that. And if we work to resist now, to call out the wrong, we may not descend into full autocracy. That’s a lesson we’ve learned from others, the earlier political exiles of autocracy. I am focused on learning from them, as part of my work now, eyeing the advent of US illiberalism. There’s too much work to do right now to focus on theoretical dangers. So let’s put the thought away, as nice as it is to think of expat Barcelona or Paris and the benefits of better health care there. Better to laser-focus on the tasks at hand.

There’s so much to write about, I have to step back, several times a day, to regain perspective. The word recalibration enters my brain again and again. I have been doing this, like nearly everyone since the election, in order to keep in view the forest, not just the trees. I am determined to keep the bigger picture in mind, in order to organize my own work, and to avoid allowing the news-of-the-day to steal more precious room in my brain or heart than it deserves.

Image: Alamo Photo Stock. Historic Images.

You with me?

The name of the game is and will remain a daily recalibration. This is also needed because we have learned, in a short period of 29 days since the election, that every day some form of guardrails will come off from what we view as the norm or the expected framing of our politics, or norms of behavior by candidates or elected officials. That is what has been, and remains, so stunning, on a daily basis, and thus, demands an active recalibration. We learn Matt Gaetz is a nominee for Attorney General. He’s so unqualified, my God, we think. We read the daily updates as the journos and pundits go mad, proving just how unqualified he is. Someone finally leaks the kept-secret House ethics report that shows his history of sexual misconduct and drug use allegations, and, boom, Gaetz is out. He withdraws, knowing he’s toast.

Today, it’s Pete Hegseth, Defense nominee, another stellar example of masculine role models. He’s an end-times Christendom warrior-believer who sports Crusader tattoos, one with an AK-47. He’s all MAGA 1000% promising his fealty to Trump, promising to go scorched earth against everyone, including trans and women soldiers he blames for weakening military morale, leaving the US army to look like wusses, in his opinion. Did I say he believes men should rule over women? Yup, and he and his Fox News producer-cum-homemaker wife worship at a Tennessee evangelical church founded by another end-times Christian crusader who believes slavery was good for the slaves. Yah, cuz, don’t forget, these Christian nationalists are very much into a white return to the good old days of the 1950’s when men ruled the house, and women served them, and children shut up and were not gay for gawd’s sake. And good Christian white people were in charge of the government, lest anyone think otherwise. That’s the Hegseth dream.

Anyway, let me not overly digress. Point being, Hegseth now looks like toast too, because, this time, intrepid journo Jane Mayer at The New Yorker got the goods on his life regarding bad manly behavior. Again, it’s sexual harassment of women, including employees. Hegseth’s demon was alcohol not drugs: he has a serious history of intoxication, to the point where employees were covering for him when he was late and about to show up on air, to tell the Fox News world how to wage a moral war against all the libtard wokies.

By tonight, by tomorrow, Hegseth will be out, we expect. The second poor-choice Trump nominee clearly not vetted for anything apart from omerta/pinkie swear loyalty to the boss, the Don -- a willingness to be outrageous and cruel and whatever is needed to prove that loyalty.

By tonight, by tomorrow, or by the weekend, we may have another stellar example of a shiny self nominee for Defense. Out Pete, enter Ron DeSantis. Trump is discussions with her former rival, Ron Desanctimonius. DeSantis a lot more dangerous and humorless and less colorful than Gaetz and Hegseth. He’ll effectively man the torpedoes, though, but won’t be smiling or wildly grinning like Hegseth. We know all about Ron.

Image copyright: Daryl Cagle / Cagle Cartoons

We also know about how to beat DeSantis, which I’ve learned about this past month from spending time with Nadine Smith, the Executive Director of Equality Florida, a former journo and activist like me. She was visiting NY last week and we hung out. We’ve been talking over the past year about Project 2025. She was meeting with global LGBTQIA+ activists who are preparing for the global gender wars that Project 2025 has promised.

Nadine is smart and experienced. The grassroots coalition that took on DeSantis paid attention, learning from their losses, too. They lost a first round, but won the later ones. Just this year, her Florida grassroots coalition won 21 of 22 lawsuits against different types of DeSantis MAGA-type wokeness lawsuits – anti-trans and gay lawsuits and that ilk. I’ll talk about how they have learned to do this in a future ‘stack, but I just want to note it here, up top. While Ron D. is a danger and a menace to gay people in particular, he’s not at all invincible. He’s not the same kind of total bro-guy born-again true believer needing to prove he can crush others guy like Hegseth or even Gaetz.

But I gotta say, Trump does know how to pick ‘em. These guys are all such messes, really. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up a lot in Florida, but all these MAGA pol wanna-be guys are just very familiar to me. I feel like I could be walking into an Olive Garden down in Daytona Beach, Fl, where I grew up (well, I was in Ormond Beach, a little less honkytonk), and I might run into Matt Gaetz meeting with his lawyer colleagues for an all-you-can-eat salad bar late lunch to talk shop, about who needs to come on board for them to get X, Y, or Z, of some anti-gay bill through a given committee. Or Pete Hegseth, wearing flip flops, shorts and a T-, with his fearsome Crusader tats, still a little hungover and he’s about to be late to go on the air at the local Fox affiliate. Guys like this are all over the Sunshine state. They want attention.

Florida is so full of all these guys like DeSantis. Conservative and not that nice. And so many born-again into evangelical lives of new purity. Florida is so full of people grasping at end-times prophecies to make sense of the mess of their lives. I suppose that’s true of a lot of America now. I’m just very familiar with Florida. I know the real draw for many of these born agains is social community, and they appreciate being told other people are responsible for the failures in their own lives. They really don’t seem to consider that advanced capitalism and a culture of excessive consumption might be at work. Instead, it all about the prosperity gospel. That, and calling for a return to patriarchy where men like Hegseth can feel like men rather than being viewed as a boozer who becomes a lech.

I have to admit that a part of me sympathizes with a guy like Hegseth, who’s almost a media caricature at this point, because deep down, all he wants is to be important. He didn’t start out to be the guy he’s become, mega aggro and a drunkle menace to women. Just like Trump, just like Gaetz. They just want to be admired even more than respected. They’re guys like Trump raised to believe they should be in charge, people should listen to them, and women should be happy they are flirting with them, not offended. They were the guys who probably were popular in high school or wanted to be. Somewhere, they got a message that being tough, or at least, more obnoxious than others, would get them noticed. Violence does speak loudly. MAGAland is a magnet for rude. It’s really a finishing school of bad behavior. The more menacing, the more attention one draws. Trump has perfected the art of bully. There are dozens of would-be Hegseths lining up for these jobs.

Okay, well I am digressing. So let me, yah, recalibrate. The reason I’m even writing about Pete and Matt and Ron D. is because I have spent too many of my important minutes this past week researching and consolidating capsule bios of the incoming Trump 2.0 government, but with a focus on how they are linked to Project 2025, and who is or has funded them, and more. A lot of journalists and think tanks are doing this, so I’m trying to avoid duplicating what others do well. But my self-assigned task has been to, for myself, get a good lay of the land, and know enough about these different nominees and the job they are being assigned, to know what they are likely to do, first or after, as it relates to Project 2025’s agenda. That’s my focus: the Day One and 180-Day Plan and exactly what we can expect, and what we can do to put a brake on that, or derail it. The defense of our very broken democracy.

That’s my recalibration. So I’m just slightly annoyed – though happy in the big picture – that Gaetz and, soon, Hegseth, are out. Not so happy Ron D. is likely in, but he’s a known quantity, and, as I said, I’m learning how others in Florida learned to fight and beat him and his administration and their tactics. This month, in fact, my big self-assignment is just that. I’ve started working with the Florida folks to analyze how they learned to beat DeSantis, and how Florida is a model for the US now, with Trump 20 and Project 2025. I want to understand it so I can then share that with others.

At the same time, I’ve been mentally spreading out the big picture of Project 2025 over a giant inner mental table, reminding myself of what is planned for each of the thirty departments of government, reminding myself of which attack is likely to come first on Day One, versus within the first six months. I need that lay of the land for myself, to plan my own work, as I said earlier, and to be systematic in how I research and report on the unfolding resistance.

I admit it’s taking a little bit more than I thought it would, to absorb and synthesize. So I have to remind myself, also every few hours, to slow down, to be patient, to take the time I need now, at the start, to be well organized in my work.

All of the above feels like a bit of a brain dump, a prelude, to what I have wanted to share with others, which is the early resistance that I’m actually documenting. Every time I meet someone, or respond to an email or text from a friend who is freaking out, I want to say to them, hang on, don’t be so freaked out. Yes, the wheels of the bus are coming off with Trump 2.0 and Project 2025, and each of these unqualified nominees, but there are a lot of people who are organized and ready to fight back.

It’s a relief to learn this, or was for me. I’m in a lot of the civil society working groups on the different topics of Project 2025. I mostly listen closely. All these very smart people, mostly expert lawyers in areas like regulatory law, who’ve been prepping for months. They know a lot of what is coming down the pike. They’re in proactive mode, not only reactive. They have divvied up the work, the planned responses to the attacks. Schedule F and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The Insurrection Act. The transgender ban. The Alien Enemies Act. The Comstock Act. Impoundment. They’ve named it all. They’re ready for what’s planned even if they aren’t sure of the best way to fight back, even as they readily acknowledge Trump holds a lot of aces, since he owns the Supreme Court and has the slim majority in Congress, and the Republicans in the Senate who could stop him or his nominees show every indication they’ll cave to pressure from MAGA or Trump. They’ll save their own skins and abandon our democracy. They’re cowards. That’s the view of the lawyers, who aren’t counting on a Congressional calvary, though they’ll pressure them anyway.

No one is pretending it isn’t as bad as it is, either. That is a relief to me, too. Better sight the enemy clearly if you want to have a chance of defeating them.

Doesn’t mean it’s not going to be ugly and brutal, either, this ‘Day One’ Project 2025 attack on our democracy and rights. It will be. But a lot of people and teams are eyes-wide-open ready. They’ve been doing their homework. One thing they’re all doing is looking at what we learned from Trump 1.0, and what worked to put the brakes on before, and what is the same and different now. And that analysis has yielded threat matrices and now, rough road maps, for Day One counter-strikes, then Day Two, and on into the 180-Day Playbook of Project 2025.

Some are also eyeing the 2026 mid-term elections, already applying what they understand about the fact that much of MAGAland, especially men, voted for the top of the ticket, to re-elect Trump, but not necessarily down-ballot. That’s where Dems won state seats even when Trump won the presidency. To some, it shows that Trump has really two years, not four, to do what he might, weaponizing Project 2025’s agenda, hollowing out the government, putting his faithful Christian army in place, loyal only to him, and consolidating his power a la Orban in Hungary. He also only won by a smidgen, not a landslide. 48- or 49-point-something percent, barely a victory. Enough to secure that critical majority in Congress, but not enough to avoid a fight over each item that Trump 2.0 proposes. He hold aces, but he’l need a lot more cards to play his hand well.

Point being, the frontline legal teams who stand ready aren’t blind or naïve. They know a tsunami is coming, and it’s real. But they have ably broken it down to see which of the biggest waves may land first, and who is best primed to surf it, and they’re consolidating resources. They aren’t minimizing the threat and harm that weaponizing ICE can to undocumented immigrants, the horror of mass internment or deportation that will be pursued even if Trump fails to weaponize the Alien Enemies Act. But other teams are also ready there, in every state, and in every sector. The immigration advocacy groups learned from Trump 1.0; so did blue state officials. Governors and Attorneys General and mayors of blue sanctuary cities and state and city officials in oasis blue towns within red states. Nobody wasted the past five months denying Project 2025. They got ready. It’s a relief.

Image: Shutterstock

I don’t know how effective their preparation has been because I’ve just started digging into all this. There’s so much reporting to do; I need my own newsroom. But I’m also recruiting others to the cause/campaign, and at least I know exactly what we need to look for.

One thing I’m tracking, for example, are the faith connections between the nominees, because I know Trump isn’t coming up with these candidates himself. They’re being proposed by the cabal of people who helped elect him, and that includes the key architects of Project 2025. They’re primarily Christian extremists, and militant Catholics like Leonard Leo. Money talks, and billions are at play here. The big money is advancing a Christian nationalist agenda. So while a guy with serious baggage like Hegseth may appear disqualified, he’s a staunch Crusader. Beyond fealty to the Don, that’s the important criteria for these nominees. Trump doesn’t care about that – he’s no Christian – but his backers do. They’re the one pulling the strings.

So I plan to follow the faith links and the money, which is another trip Nadine from Florida shared from the beat-Ron DeSantis arsenal. Exposing the corruption and kleptocracy of Trump 2.0 will go far to mobilize Americans of all political stripes. That and the links of dark money to the Christian nationalist groups. No one likes getting ripped off, even hardline MAGA Christian voters who think Trump is fallen King Cyrus who’s restoring the kingdom of heaven to America. When the see their health care gutted or Social Security reduced, their insurance premiums skyrocketing, and see how the new Trump nominees are lining their pockets, they may not be as enthusiastic. Of course, it will be late for them to reverse course. But, yes, we need to follow the money.

At the same time, I want to warn my friends, others, the people who email me about our Resisting 2025 campaign. I want to say, look, whatever you are thinking about Trump and Project 2025, it’s going to be different for anything we’ve seen. They are going to unleash a shitstorm of big Executive Orders that are designed to overwhelm us, so we don’t know where to turn first, and we can’t focus on them easily, there are so many. That’s a strategy. So, get ready. Expect it and focus on your part, and be ready for that. They count on us to be overwhelmed. We need to stand strong and target our Day One counter-responses.

Bottom line, don’t underestimate them. They are out for blood. They will go after Biden & Co. Hunter is protected now because Joe took him out of the line of fire. None of us are happy about the pardon, but we can all acknowledge that Trump is playing for keeps. He wants revenge. He plans to punish. Joe is going to get all lawyered up. Nancy Pelosi too. Maybe Rosie O’Donnell, too. There are so many Trump enemies. Mostly they’ll be in the Dept of Justice and FBI and Homeland Security and those DOD generals like Mark Milley who enraged Trump for daring to defy hm. They’re on the short list.

We need to be ready for a scale of attack that is bigger than we can easily digest. By expecting that, by creating that big space in our minds to absorb it. They count on overwhelming us. Wo So let’s be as ready as we can for the unimaginable. If it turns out to be less than that, well, all the better for our side. There won’t be the same level of shock there was, for many, with the election and the dark parade of unqualified nominees that have followed.

Then I want to add, to soften my warning: There’s good news to counter that, though, in addition to teams of lawyers being ready who’ve drafted their own counter-lawsuits, there are other groups, too. And there is the actual make-up of the United States, as a decentralized nation-body of states, each with its own legislature, that is going to make it much harder for Trump to do what he would like than, say, his mentor Viktor Orban, who has provided the world with his cookie-cutter model and playbook for illiberalism.

Image: Shutterstock

So now let me step back and explain what I mean by this.

First, the other teams. We have several of them, and they’ve all been busy and focused and meeting for months, dissecting and counter-engineering Project 2025 to make their fight-back plans. Right now, for example, many people are asking about who in Congress will fight back against these wildman Trump Cabinet picks. Who will demand FBI background checks of the yahoos? Who is ready to put up some guardrails? Is anyone?

I was looking into that. It looks like the people we’d like to count on fall into two sets of Congressional groups, on both sides of the political aisle. Neither appear to have as much power as we or they want or need to stop Trump. The Dems include House Reps from the Oversight Committee and include the powerhouse moral guard Jamie Raskin, who is fantastic and unsparing and brave and gives as good as he gets as far as being a Democratic defender of our democracy and all the rights we are hoping to protect. He and committee colleagues are in overdrive, doing what they can. He’s pushing back in tweets and TV interviews and collaring colleagues in back-chamber powwows to make sure the Dems do everything they can to investigate the nominees.

And they’re pushing Biden, though, truth be told, everyone is a bit appalled at the Hunter Biden pardon and knows progressive America lost some sacred moral ground there. It wasn’t right, meaning, we can’t yell at Trump about corruption and pardoning the J6 insurrectionists and easily defend Joe’s decision to pardon his son for making a false statement about owning a gun and failing to file his taxes on time while he was copping heroin. They aren’t comparable crimes, or morally equivocal, but it’s still favoritism. And mostly, it helps Trump. So that sucks. And it has hurt Joe Biden’s legacy and by extension, the Democratic party. It gives fuel and a match to anyone who sees both parties are the same and corrupt and wants to blow everything up, watch it all go up in smoke. Our two party system, for starters. It undermines belief in our democracy and system of justice at the very moment we need to invest in it more than ever.

Now, back to Congress, and the other side of the aisle, Then there are about five GOP Senators, including Lisa Murkowski, who are deemed possibly independent and protected enough from Trump and MAGA threats to maybe hold the line against unqualified individuals or total corruption picks. But not all have shown an appetite for that fight, either. So far, the general consensus is that we should not count on the Republican Senate to be our guardrail against autocracy. But we can talk to these Senators and lobby them, and encourage them, and let them know the majority of Americans implore them to do the right thing.

We just shouldn’t expect it. We can’t afford false illusions now. We need to keep a sharpshooter’s eye on the threats.

Image: Shutterstock

Next are the blue state teams. There are three groups mobilizing. The democratic governors have formed an emergency task force to respond to Trump 2.0. They’re sharing notes on what worked to stop Trump 1.0, against ICE raids, against trans kids and families, against attacks on public health and Medicaid and the safety net, against public education and attacks on DEI. They’re instructing agencies to get ready. This week CA Gov. Gavin Newsom asked his state Congress for $25 million to give to the CA Department of Justice to get ready for Trump 2.0 attacks. He will probably get it. I am certain the other governors are doing the same and I plan to know by this time next week.

The DAGA are also mobilizing – the Democratic Attorneys General. They appear to be jostling for power a bit, to be the lead dog in the attack bag plan. The blue state governors are going to give the DAGAs more money to lawyer up, to have more legal soldiers ready to defend against the attacks they expect on Day One and after. That is happening.

Then there are the mayors. I haven’t seen any public announcement of the Democratic mayors organizing into a resistance battle contingent, but I expect it. Under Trump 1.0, they often acted as a body, took positions, and action, and helped each other, sharing tips on how to respond to the mass deportations. When DeSantis and Greg Abbott in Texas began forcibly sending busloads of migrants to blue cities, the mayors huddled, and have collaborated to share lessons and strategies for municipal responses.

We aren’t reading about all the blue city preparedness going on, but it’s happening, you can be sure. There isn’t a blue city mayor in America who isn’t braced for the storm, who hasn’t been convening with staffers and city stakeholders to consider how the shit will come down for residents in their communities.

I wish I was further ahead in my own reporting, so I could share more details about all this. But I’m where I am today, aware of the great, fast-moving, massive ripple across America and the world of the moving blue waters, as I think of it, coming to cool down the fires that Trump and Co. are setting every day.

It’s big, I think, it’s real and ugly and going to hurt so many people. And all those Americans, including people I know and love who voted for Trump to bring good changes to America and our economy, not a terror shitshow, are going to find themselves also very uncomfortable and less happy when they smell the smoke and realize their own houses are on fire. But that isn’t today. Right now, we are 46 days out. The Executive Orders are written, more nominees will get named or dropped. We can already see who and what we are dealing with.

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore – French resistant artivists

(aka Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe)

A final note before I end today’s entry.

I have been reading a wonderful biography of the rather odd, brilliant, and definitely mentally unsteady lesbian writer Claude Cahun and her girlfriend, artist Marcel Moore, by one of my favorite authors, Rupert Thomson. (And I have to note that: I have actually started reading – and reading fiction – as the empire falls, something I wasn’t able to do all last year, as Project 2025 grew as a threat.) Part of their story covers their lives in France during WW2, and their role in the resistance to Hitler. They were both lesbians, and slight weirdos, and originalist artists, hanging with the French Surrealists including Andre Breton.

Cahun is the dominant figure in the novel, which is narrated by Moore, who Thomson manages to brilliantly inhabit. (I’m so impressed by his talent). While living in the Channel Islands off of Normandy, which were occupied by German Nazi forces, the women began a subterfuge campaign of satirical visual propaganda resistance. They eventually got caught, and survived months of internment. The war was almost over, and somehow, they evaded being sent the gas camps. After the war, they took up life, but much had changed, including themselves, and their relationship.

It was good to read because it’s an excellent novel, and Thomson is a true lit talent I really admire and enjoy, and for the historic perspective it provided on the unfolding of what I view as the early Weimar days arriving here in America. It was useful to be freshly reminded of the depths of people’s cruelty and those who collaborated, and also neighborly love and solidarity, and of small, daily acts of local resistance, and all the ways we must work to stay human and open to love and beauty and the gift of life that we have as long as we are alive. I was reminded of all the forms that resistance can take, and the importance of the ordinary.

Right now, as I write, I have a great cup of coffee I got at a coffee shop I’ve escaped to, needing a day office apart from my home office. I am not headed to Malaga, the number one expat choice I read about this morning, and shared with friends who are headed there, as they scout possible future expat exile getaway options in Europe. I need to be here, and my children are here, and I need to figure out my own work and form of personal resistance and so many things. All the things personal and deeply political to me, and all the things relevant to my most immediate communities, and all the things coming for us in the weeks ahead.

So on that note, I am also keeping my eye on a historic unfolding that is happening right now in DC, where US vs. Skrmetti is being debated at the Supreme Court. Chase Strangio is making history there as the first openly transgender lawyer to argue a SCOTUS case, one that is going to decide whether bans on gender-affirming care for children (including puberty blockers, hormones, and gender reassignment surgery) violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th amendment to the US Constitution. The decision won’t happen today and could take months, but is viewed as a major one that will impact on the many anti-trans lawsuits already filed in state courts across America, and the ones to come. Project 2025 is hell-bent on implementing a global transgender care ban.

Unfortunately, the outcome is not likely to be positive, given the Christian conservatives who dominate our Supreme Court. They are politically bought, but some also agree with the antigay, take-us-back-to-the-1950’s camp. Don’t forget: Samuel Alito is the justice who flew the wink-wink ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Christian nationalist flag from his beach house, and the upside down American flag at his house, a ‘Stop The Steal’ MAGA symbol. Amy Coney Barrett comes from the People of Praise, a close-knit religious community that actually has handmaidens. Clarence Thomas, Leonard Leo’s close pal, is a serious Bible-thumper. These are Christian zealots. Doesn’t matter if they got law degrees and got pushed to the highest court with dark right money. They’re truest believers. Nothing nonpartisan about them. So in terms of faith, I have almost none in their ability to impartially or fairly interpret the law or Constitution. They may sworn to uphold the law, but the book that most matters to them is the Bible. And they’re accountable to the men who got them their jobs and lent them money.. Leonard Leo and the billionaire donors who they count as friends.

So the smoke is rising on a major battlefront a few hours away. I feel a deep current of solidarity and pride for Chase Strangio, tapped to be playing such an important role in the bigger story of trans rights in America and the world, and our US civil rights. And win or lose – and I expect this will be a big setback, possibly like Roe v. Wade -- I take heart, knowing that this is not the final legal word or battle, but a major red line. I know that, win or lose with Trump 2.0, with parts of Project 2025, we will emerge victorious in years to come. We, meaning, the cause of democracy and human and civil rights. But we will lose in the short term and only if we resist will we battle back.

Autocracies never last. Strongmen find themselves facing courts of justice after they are overthrown or retire after scandal. Yesterday South Korea’s opposition prevented an 11^th hour insider coup attempt by South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, and now, 24-hours later, he is facing calls for his resignation or impeachment. Justice is not static, even when severely censored or gone silent. Putin has lasted for a long time in Russia, and Navalny died in his freezing prison, and Putin is definitely behind the disinformation campaigns in Europe and the US that are fueling the rise of populism and illiberalism there and here. But he will not emerge the victor in the far future. Neither he nor Benjamin Netanyahu, waging genocide in Gaza, nor Viktor Orban, or Millei in Argentina. We have to keep a long view, even as we keep our eyes on the loosening justice guardrails of today and tomorrow. In the longer view, the look-back view of history, none of these scoundrels ever ages well.

PS. A post-script. It’s past 6 pm. I had to check the news on the way home. Chase Strangio did a great job, by at least one news account, in defending the SCOTUS case of transgender identity and equal right to health care. But the justices appear not only unswayed by his argument, they appear ready to roll back the clock further on trans rights, to pave the way for future challenges to cases of sex discrimination. These are 1950s holy warriors; they fear women’s power, too. Things are not looking good, not at all.

I told myself I was ready for it to get worse, and I am. But I’m also sad for my friends who are parents of trans kids, and I’m pissed for everyone else, myself included. All trans people, all gay people of which I am one, and all the wonderful American people who have fought so hard for civil rights and the promise of this country and its Constitution to fulfill a pledge of equality. Skrmetti may prove a gut punch.

You hear me, Jimmy Baldwin? I hear you. I got your words burning in my ears: It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.