THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM WILL NOT RESCUE DEMOCRACY

      It is time to get real about what the judicial system is doing to help Trump.

 

Like the autocrat who he is, Trump is ruling by executive orders.  He has issued hundreds, most of them illegal or unconstitutional.  His strategy is to establish fait accompli as facts on the ground.  Departments, agencies, and individuals are acting on them.  Meanwhile, organizations and individuals are opposing them by bringing suits against them.  Judges at the district and appellate levels have ruled against most of Trump’s executive orders.  While decisions are being appealed, they are not being enforced; the courts might be pausing, but are not actually stopping, Trump from doing as he pleases.  So Trump defies the courts, his orders remain in place, and their damage continues and is not undone.  Notwithstanding, the commentariat clings to the hope that the courts are the last line of defense of democracy.

 

Many important cases have not yet arrived at the Supreme Court, and the Left pins its hopes on decisions preserving democracy as we know it.  But there is no realistic reason to believe that a court led by John Roberts, a shallow, weak, privileged preppie, has the integrity and courage to defy Trump’s wishes.  In fact, his and the court’s record even when Trump was not in office is one of egregious rulings, many in defiance of common sense, reality, or precedent—all with their anti-democratic bias in favor of authoritarianism.

 

Four major decisions, with many others also decided on political, not legal, grounds, have already damaged the standing of the rule of law.  Many have already damaged democracy

 

Its Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission decision (2010) ruled, in effect, that money equals speech; therefore, the First Amendment permits unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions.  The result has been the flooding of campaigns with contributions of millionaires and billionaires deciding many election results.

 

Its Shelby County v. Holder decision (2013) eliminated preclearance under the Voting Rights Act and weakened that act because the decision held that racism no longer influenced elections in pre-cleared jurisdictions.  Immediately, those jurisdictions began to restrict the franchise and skew or hinder voting.  The decision has eroded “the consent of the people” in this democracy.

 

Its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision (2022) overturned the constitutional right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade (1973).  Three Trump nominees—Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh—testified that Roe v. Wade was “settled” law yet supported the decision.  Their perjured testimony, added to the misleading disclosure statements of Justices Thomas and Alito, has tarnished the court’s reputation for honesty.

 

Its Trump v. United States decision granted the president presumptive immunity from criminal liability for official acts and absolute immunity for some “core” official acts.  The result virtually exempts the president from legal accountability and places him (or her) above the law.

 

A fifth major decision now pending  on birthright citizenship might make it difficult, if not impossible, for courts to restrain presidential power, according to a brief account from Democracy Docket:

 

SCOTUS mulls limiting judges’ authority to block Trump’s power grab

SCOTUS heard oral argument in the birthright citizenship case that could greatly limit federal judges' ability to block President Donald Trump from expanding presidential powers. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described the government's stance as a "catch-me-if-you-can" regime that would make it virtually impossible to use the courts to block government actions.

 

Such a ruling would amount to a death knell for constitutional democracy in America and an orchestrated peal for authoritarianism.

 

But it is not only the Supreme Court which supports many of Trump’s executive orders and administrative actions.  The federal judicial system as a whole is doing likewise by failing to enforce decisions against the Trump administration.  It is acting slowly and cautiously while the damage of those orders and actions continues at an alarming rate.  Abrego Garcia was illegally deported to El Salvador shortly after 15 March; two months later, despite court rulings and orders, he remains there.  The Trump administration is defying the courts, and the courts are doing nothing to effect Garcia’s return to the United States or to address the administration’s defiance.  Meanwhile, his administration is on a rampage of arrests, jailings, and deportations of students, children, citizens, judges, and, possibly soon, congressional representatives.  The courts have stopped none of these offenses, for not one court order on immigration has been obeyed.

 

In short, the federal judiciary, although ruling against almost all of Trump’s executive orders, is taking no enforcement or corrective action.  It is helping Trump by failing to recognize the damage done and being done, ignoring the threat of greater damage to come, tolerating his non-compliance or defiance, and disregarding the urgency of the moment.  It is thus abetting his conduct and eroding not only its own authority, but also the rule of law.  The constitutional crisis, which many claim is approaching, is already here.

 

So, sadly and scarily, the courts have shown that they will not be the last line of defense of democracy.  Which means—to get real—that “We the People” must be that last line or accept the status of second-class or even uncertain citizenship.  But that line of defense is being resisted by Republicans at both federal and state levels who are hard at work to manipulate the 2026 state, House, and Senate elections to ensure GOP wins, to deny the validity and legitimacy of elections, and to support Trump’s authoritarian rule.  Trump might, if his actions continue to rouse the citizenry, prompt protests, and threaten widespread GOP defeats, label demonstrations as insurrections, declare martial law, suppress protests with federalized national guard troops, or even suspend elections.  If so in 2026, no better in 2028. 

SEXY ISSUES: SEX, GENDER, AND PRURIENT SCOLDS

      When I was a boy (and thought of myself as a boy and did boy things), my parents taught me that one did not talk about politics, religion, or sex in polite society.  I think that they meant with others on social occasions.  For dinner table talk almost always involved politics and religion and, on weekends, inevitable, tedious accounts of their weekend rounds of golf.  But not sex.

Until high school, there were two, and only two, sexes.  There still are only two, biologically speaking.  But there were whispers about one or two high-school classmates that some boys and some girls did not do the usual—today, “straight”—things.  There were even hushed comments to the same effect about family and friends.  I had no taste for the salacious, so the gossip went in one ear and out the other.  But there were moments.

 

I remember coming home from third grade in the middle of the afternoon and going up the front instead of the back stairs to my room, and encountering my mother and a young woman, a daughter of family friends, leaving my parents’ bedroom.  It seemed odd to me at the time, even when I was only nine.  I said only “hello” as I passed by them; I never asked my mother about it. Years later, I understood that she was bisexual in relationships outside marriage.  I remember her concern when a gay family friend, the social columnist of one of the city’s two major papers, needed a ride home.  He was drunk, and I could tell that my mother was afraid that he would make a pass at 18-year-old me.  I knew better, and I was right.  At lunch many years later, a client and friend came out to me.  I nodded, resumed our previous topic of conversation, and irritated him because I did not acknowledge how much it meant to him at the time, in the 90s, to come out.  I apologized that my detachment showed insensitivity to, not appreciation of, what he had done.  I added that I had had no experience to sensitize me and hoped that my detachment foretold the indifference which he hoped all straights might someday achieve.  He agreed.

 

Decades later, what used to be private is flagrantly public, and what used to be personal is heatedly political.  Worst of all, matters of sex and gender give CINOs (Christians in Name Only) the excuse to be both hateful and self-righteous in the name of a divinity whom they call their lord, who had nothing to say about the LGBTQIA+ members of society, and who, if we give him credit according to the Good Book, preached love for all, including one’s enemies.  Let me be clear: I do not think of LGBTQIA+ as enemies.  For millions and for me, they are family, friends, neighbors, teammates, co-religionists, family doctors and lawyers and accountants, co-workers, public servants, etc.  All are citizens of the United States and have the right to equal treatment under the law.  I would sooner dispense with CINOs than LGBTQIA+s.

 

The issues which have outraged CINOs concern transgender issues, namely, issues arising from the discrepancy between a person’s sex as determined by anatomy and a person’s gender as reflecting “socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities of individuals,” including “how individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others, including societal expectations related to how to act, talk, dress, and interact” (AI).  The particularly inflammatory issues are about bathrooms and sports.

 

The first issue is just silly.  Unisex bathrooms cause no real problems.  The sounds and smells from stalls are much the same.  If men move to stand a little closer to wall urinals when a woman walks by, they are not embarrassed, and she is not disappointed.  I cannot imagine how a transgender person changes the situation.  If a born female becomes a transgender male, he is going to use the men’s room as men use it; if a born male becomes a transgender female, she is going to use the women’s room as women use it.  What is the problem?

[Post-posting note.  I limited my discussion to unisex bathrooms.  But the use of separate sex bathrooms is going to be for the usual purposes no matter what a person's gender.  We must laugh to scorn the prurient scolds who fantasize to the contrary.]

 

The second inflammatory issue is not silly, but it is not unsolvable.  The key is the difference between sex and gender, that is, the capabilities of abiding sex after a change of gender.  If sex confers an advantage after a change in gender, it should be the basis of disqualification.  If a born female becomes a transgender male and wants to play men’s sports, he probably puts himself at a disadvantage because he likely lacks the biological capabilities of men.  Without any advantage, he should be allowed to play with men if he wishes.  But, if a born male becomes a transgender female and wants to play women’s sports, she probably enjoys a biological advantage which the change in gender does not nullify.  If denied the opportunity to compete with other women, she will likely believe herself—rightly—excluded because of the sex which she had abandoned, but, if she is not denied, her female competitors will believe that she has denied them fair chances.  No one thinks that a team should include a “ringer.”

 

CINOs imagine non-existent problems.  Despite their fears of LGBTQIA+ people as sexual perverts and predators, media coverage of incidents of the sexual aggression imputed to them is rare because such incidents are rare.  Problems posed by sexual deviants are mostly limited to those who do not have or cannot be allowed to have sexual relationships.  I am thinking of the involuntarily celibate (incels) and Catholic priests (no nuns?) whose abuses are shameful, harmful, and known to be such by the perpetrators, the abuses by priests made worse by the Church’s efforts to conceal them, regardless of long-term damage to the victims.

 

My rule in matters of sex and gender is a simple one: do as you please with anyone who is legally capable of giving informed consent and shares your proclivities and preferences, but do not meddle in others’ relationships.  Having been content in straight relationships, I have had no prurient obsessions about others’ relationships.  Indeed, I suspect that third-party scolds who worry about others’ relationships unwittingly reveal that theirs are less than satisfactory and require lurid distractions.  I even speculate that a little envy might play a role in their censures.

 

 

NOTE on sexy literature in the public schools.  School teachers and especially librarians have expertise in age-suitable literature.  There is no educational, only politically ideological or personally theological, reasons for challenging their judgment.  The social and informational environment in which children live educates them in matters of sex and gender before they even get to classroom or library bookshelves.  Instead of scratching their itch or virtue signaling, parents should provide guidance at home, in sober, informed discussions of sex and gender.  But I fear that such discussions are precisely what parents who would be book censors cannot have.

 

Such discussions can be fraught.  At a local rock concert, my daughter, a rising high-school senior, met a Naval Academy cadet, a rising senior soon to be, he claimed, commander of cadets.  He asked her for a date.  After a discussion, my wife and I gave her our consent to the usual movie, snack, home-by-midnight evening.  When he arrived, I stated the curfew and gave him a wordless message about the proprieties.  When he called for a second date, I sat my daughter down for a father-daughter chat.  I told her—she surely knew what I went on to tell her, but, as I liked to say, it made me feel good to say it—that he was older and more experienced than she.  I said that I preferred she draw the line at the neck and insisted that she draw it at the waist.  To which she responded, “Oh, Dad, I’m so embarrassed.”  “Better,” I said, “than being pregnant.”  She arrived home early from the second date, strode straight and silently to her room, and slammed the door.  Days later, she thanked me for the advice enabling her to say “no: my Dad will kill me.”

A LETTER TO MY FOREIGN FRIENDS

      I have heard from many of you about the decline of the United States since Trump’s election, emphatically since his inauguration.  Some of you are sad, others mad, no one glad.  I am right there with all of you in all of the above.  I have meant to reply to each of you for some time, but I find it difficult to be clear and coherent about so many diverse and difficult thoughts and feelings which change almost on an hourly basis.

I am a loyal American, and I love my country.  But I make no apology for Trump’s vicious actions or vulgar behavior in the conduct of his office, either as an expression of contrition or a justification for it.  Instead, I assert that his vision of America, if Trump can be said to have one, is a betrayal of this country and a travesty of this great experiment in democracy.  I am ashamed that the conduct of many elected officials, not to mention the mavens of the media and the once-called “captains of industry” makes America appear to be no longer “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as our national anthem would have it in conclusion.  In the highest political circles of both parties, it is the land of the fear and the home of the craven.

 

I think that worse than all of the inane and shifting policies; incompetent and corrupt actions; and dishonesty and crudity of Trump and his minions is the failure of so many elected officials across the political spectrum to resist Trump by asserting and supporting the country’s basic principles: the equality of all people, the consent of the governed, and the rule of law.

 

But I do not despair; the Republican’s attempted coup as outlined by Project 2025 is stalling.  More and more judges—the Supreme Court has yet to be heard from—, law firms and media outlets, and institutions of higher education are erecting a defense of democracy and thwarting Trump.  Local efforts are attracting people of all political parties to protest his efforts.  “We the people” are bringing this administration to a halt.

 

Meanwhile, Trump will cause millions to suffer hunger, disease, and death here and abroad.  They will do a great deal of damage to this country, other countries, and the international world order.  Some effects will be long-lasting, some permanent.  Even reforms of the wisest kind are unlikely to fully restore the trust which America had earned over generations and its generally benign leadership exercised for 80 years after the end of World War II.

 

I hope that the Democratic Party will not only overwhelmingly triumph over the Republican Party, but also take steps to prevent the recovery of this neo-fascist party and a recycling of Republican Party coup attempts.  Those who have been involved in this attempted coup against American’s constitutional democracy—Trump did not act alone; he acted with their consent—must be held accountable.  Under the law and the rule of law, they must be subject to vigorous investigation, rigorous prosecution, and maximum punishment, including incarceration.  The success or failure of such efforts will depend on whether they purify or putrefy the body politic.

 

Not many years after the end of World War II, I imagined that America could become a fascist state.  In my early years, I understood that excrescences like Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, The John Birch Society, the KKK, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and others of their ilk represented millions of Americans.  Now, at the close of my life, I understand that excrescences like Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Donald Trump, the Steves Bannon and Miller, The Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, and others of their ilk also represent millions of Americans.  I am puzzled that a persistent third of my fellow citizens reject the promises of America's principles.  If America’s success does not appeal to them, I have to fear that its failure will—a phenomenon beyond my comprehension.  I want to say, as—I cannot resist saying—another Jew said long ago, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  But I cannot.  Many more than one man’s life is at stake.

 

I hope for something better for us and wish for everything best for you.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT TRUMP AND HIS ENABLERS?

      On April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, Ulysses S. Grant made a generous gesture; he allowed the defeated soldiers—traitors to their country—to keep their horses and sidearms.  In the aftermath, they, their fellows, and, in the decades since, their sympathizers simmered in resentment at the liberation of slaves and their loss to the richer, better educated, and more tolerant victors of the North and West. They spread their hatred of blacks and the federal government wherever they went: after the war, by the Oregon trail to the Northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest; during the Depression, to the industrial North.  (The proposed state of Jefferson is named, not for Thomas Jefferson, but for Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.)  The line connecting the dots—Ku Klux Klan, Tea Party, MAGA Republican Party—is white Christian nationalism, with its fundamental doctrines of white supremacy, bigotry, nativism, and economic inequality (deserving rich versus undeserving poor). 

The Republican Party, under the control of Donald J. Trump, embraces and implements those antidemocratic positions at federal and state levels.  It violates peoples’ rights and government laws in policies and practices defying the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the provisions of the Constitution.  It tolerates Trump’s on attacks free and fair elections, the courts, law firms, colleges and universities, and the media.  It tolerates his efforts to weaken, corrupt, or destroy government agencies like FEMA and NOAA, and to reduce or eliminate government programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP—all of which benefit millions of Americans. Its control of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches of the federal and many state governments makes their political officeholders responsible and thus accountable.

 

The aftermath of Trump’s disastrous reign and Republican rule has received little attention.  But it must receive it.  If democracy is to recover from the wreckage which they have wrought and to avoid a repetition, three conditions must be met.  One, Democrats must prevail by large numbers in 2026 and 2028 despite Republicans’ antidemocratic attempts to corrupt or coerce state and federal elections in their favor.  Two, the Democratic Party must rouse and purge itself of its dead weight: lethargic leaders who, instead of resisting the Republican coup, demonstrated a lack of convictions or courage.  Three, Democrats, despite accusations of political revenge, must accept the necessity of holding federal and state Republican officeholders and their major supporters accountable to revive democracy and restore it to a healthy and enduring condition.

 

My consideration of the post-Trump scene proposes steps, first to ensure the accountability of those who have done so much to diminish and damage democracy, then to restore and enhance it.  My steps of accountability are stern, as befits the gravity of the attempted Republican coup against the country.  Republicans who have weaponized government powers against their enemies will claim that their enemies weaponize those powers against them—tit for tat.  Not so.  Trump’s Executive Orders aim to abuse individuals or organizations, in or out of government, for disagreeing with his policies or opposing his interests; or to eliminate or pervert the purposes of duly established agencies serving long-established public interests.  Much legislation in the Republican-controlled Congress aims to curtail the political rights of, or impose hardships on, millions of Americans.  (A Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would act and legislate differently.)  Accordingly, my steps of accountability include violations not only of established laws, but also of what I call “crimes against country,” for which the processes of justice are appropriate.  My tacit analogy is to “crimes against humanity” applied retroactively at the Nurenberg Trials, which assumed that Nazi officials knew, without formal laws, that, say, mass murder is wrong.  Likewise, Republicans know that their efforts are damaging and wrong.

 

The first steps deal with the president.  Trump should be impeached.  Even if he is not convicted, his impeachment and trial will inform the public of the depth and breadth of his criminality.  The political risks of a third impeachment will be greatly reduced if Trump’s approval ratings have continued to plummet into 2026.  Congress should pass legislation to undo the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision exempting the president from criminal liability for any official acts by enacting a narrow definition of the word “official” and overriding Trump’s veto.  It should also approve three proposed Constitutional amendments.  One would declare the president never above the law and liable to prosecution for Constitutional violations or felonious crimes while in office, with standing limited to victims or members of Congress.  Two would address Executive Orders and presidential pardons; each should require approval in advance by a majority of the leadership of both chambers yet liable to disapproval by a majority of members in either chamber within thirty days.

 

The second step involves the impeachment of all Cabinet members, and criminal and tax investigations of them, other political appointees, policy-making staff members, and their non-government consultants/advisors.  Those pardoned by Trump should be charged with crimes against country.

 

The third step deals with Republicans in the House and Senate who have supported Trump even though he violated the Constitution and federal laws, arrogated Congressional powers to himself, and, in the case of the Senate, approved the least competent and most compliant cabinet officials in the history of the country.  All Republican House and Senate leaders, and all leaders and prominent members of the Freedom Caucus during Trump’s administration should be expelled.  Governors should be advised that neither chamber will seat their appointees who have been MAGA/Trump supporters or sympathizers.

 

The fourth steps are the impeachment of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who discredit the Court because of ethical lapses and conflicts of interest; and the censure of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts for failed leadership.

 

The fifth steps are investigations of organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council for potential tax code violations, with prosecutions, convictions, and sentences as appropriate; and, given their political activities, consideration of their tax-exempt status.

 

The sixth step is Congressional approval of the following four additional Constitutional amendments, which:

 

• Mandate the unqualified right and unfettered access of all citizens and all permanent residents, including those incarcerated, to vote.

• Establish criteria for voting districts without regard to race, sex or gender, religion, national origin, or political orientation; and uniform administrative criteria for election procedures and schedules in federal elections.

• Give standing to any citizen or permanent resident, or groups of citizens or permanent residents to pursue a legal grievance respecting their voting rights.

• Establish the independence of the Department of Justice and all agencies created by Congress from any official in the Executive Branch, excepting the President’s nomination of officials requiring the Senate’s confirmation or rejection; and require the Senate’s confirmation or rejection of any president or cabinet member advisor or consultant with management, personnel, or policy-making authority.

 

In addition to these Constitutional amendments, Congress should pass legislation which restores the status quo ante of departments, agencies, and their programs, with adjustments as necessary.

 

I am not—no one should be—disposed to leniency for Republican officeholders who have tolerated, supported, or participated in any way in the Republican coup against democratic government.  Contrary to their oaths of office, they have shown little willingness to protect the Constitution, to preserve and promote democracy, or to accept the will of the majority.  They have shown a disregard for the “domestic welfare” of the American people.  They should be subject to investigation, prosecution, and, if convicted, subject to the severest penalties allowed by law and, under no circumstances, spared incarceration.  Administration lawyers, if not criminally implicated, should be investigated for unprofessional conduct, including dishonesty and contempt of court, and treated no less severely.  Justice must be done if injustice is not to be repeated with grievous consequences for the country and its people.

BLIND FURY: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ATTACK ON ACADEME

       The iconic figure of Blind Fury is a classical god lashing out violently at anyone or anything not to its liking.  Godhood aside, Trump is a blind fury in his ignorance about and violence toward anything which he believes upholds conduct, principles, or values not white, male, and Christian, or positions not in accord with administration policy.  His administration attacks law firms, the courts, the media, and institutions of higher education, the latter for promoting woke and DEI, and, purportedly, permitting antisemitism.  These exercises of blind fury misdirect its violence—various efforts to seize control of or defund academic activities—toward curriculums, instruction, and research having little or nothing to do with woke, DEI, or antisemitism.

The fact is that scientific, technical, and engineering fields have little to do with woke or DEI.  Programs, courses, and research in, say, fusion power, quantum computing, astrophysics, microbiology, immunology, and the like are unrelated to these controversial issues.  Faculty and students in such fields rarely are involved in political demonstrations and rarely make public statements about these issues.  Their expertise and interests are elsewhere.  So, when the Trump administration withholds millions or billions of research dollars from colleges and universities, it withholds them mainly from the fields which give America its technological superiority and much of its economic strength.

 

The fields not much affected by withholding federal research dollars are the social sciences and the humanities: psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, history, philosophy, literature, and the arts.  These fields place humans and their relationships at their core and attract faculty and students interested in them.  They involve issues concerning race, gender, class, and colonialism; offer practical responses like awareness (woke) and amelioration (DEI); and prompt criticisms of disfavored conditions or circumstances.  These issues have become more prominent and political in these fields as well as in society since at least the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation Movements and the Vietnam War.

 

My field in which I have a PhD is English, but I am no apologist for it.  I was an independent consultant (defense, energy, environment) and, in my spare time and retirement, an independent scholar, now with a dozen refereed articles and a book to my credit.  I kept up with scholarship in my field and with my friends, many of them distinguished professors.  They became increasingly disgruntled and disillusioned over the past five decades by a field corrupted by a misguided quest for relevance defined by political perspectives and approaches.  Some students responded similarly.  My daughter swore off English classes altogether after one literature class at Cornell because the instructor made clear that only some views were acceptable and discouraged others; classroom discussion was thus circumscribed and not in accord with academic freedom.  Not surprisingly, course enrollments and the number of majors have declined for decades.

 

So accusations from the Right about Leftist politics in academe in five recent decades are not without foundation.  The influence of politics in the social sciences and the humanities is similar, though it varies in details and degree.  In the study of literature in the four preceding decades, the prevailing interpretive approach to literature was New Criticism, which viewed a literary work as a self-contained aesthetic object requiring little or no reference to the author, the audience, or the world in which it was written.  The Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation Movements and the Vietnam War ended the detachment of literature from the life which gives it meaning.  The ending came about because graduate school enabled objectors to that conflict to find a refuge from the draft—which means that, for many, the motive for graduate study was politics, not literature.  The texts are literary, but they became the pretexts for interpretations skewed by political rather than literary factors, with the sanction of making literature “relevant” to the times.  With contributions from subsidiary fashions in interpretation, New Historicism—as some have quipped, neither new nor historical—became the prevailing interpretive approach to literature.  Its political concerns continue today.

 

Yet English professors sometimes inadvertently exhibit their arrogance and ignorance when they work from a political perspective or approach.  Consider the pontification of a certain famous professor, once at Columbia, now at Yale.  In discussing Macbeth, he declares that Macbeth had a better claim to the throne than Malcolm, the assassinated king’s son, because he had been duly elected king by the assembled thanes.  This professor’s political cynicism, shared by many, led him to regard an election by thanes ignorant of Macbeth’s force and fraud as valid because of a formal vote.  Only English professors, I think, would make such a claim; today, they would find the slates of alternative electors valid because someone signed and stamped them.

 

This instance of the harmful influence of political thinking on literary interpretation is unusual because it does not address any of the four predominant lenses of New Historicism and prevailing perspectives in the other humanities and the social sciences: race, gender, class, and colonization.  These perspectives are foundations of campus fashions: political correctness, identity groupings, safe zones, trigger warnings, canceling, etc.  Campus demonstrations about the Israeli-Hamas conflict express anti-Israel, pro-Palestine sympathy and support because they reflect an approved anti-occidental perspective which sees Israel as colonizing, West Bank and Gaza as colonized.  By contrast, where Western colonizing cannot be raised as a consideration, protesters have no concern and nothing to say about ethnic cleansing and genocidal wars in sub-Saharan Africa—proof of their extra-literary, political ideology parochial and partisan.

 

So some research and teaching in the humanities and social science have an ideological slant to them.  But their correction or elimination cannot be achieved by coercion or punishment.  Trump’s inappropriate, ill-conceived, misdirected, or indiscriminate interventions or penalties targeting institutions, departments, programs, or courses of higher education intend to destroy, if they cannot control and pervert, them.  Even classroom commissars required by a federal administration could not reform slanted classroom instruction; they could merely reverse an ideological slant in the instruction.

 

Trump’s blind fury cannot achieve his malign purpose.  It cannot obliterate ideas or eradicate institutions; ideas survive, institutions revive.  Academe is not perfect; however, criticism of its imperfections, whether from within or without, can suggest reforms.  But only the slow-acting, self-correcting modalities of academe can reform inappropriate research and teaching.  For best results, academe, best able to understand its distinctive character, must be allowed to reform itself in its mission to serve the truth and, by doing so, its society.

HOW SHOULD DEMOCRATS APPROACH AN ELECTION WHICH MIGHT NOT TAKE PLACE?

 [NOTE: In a previous blog, I mentioned the likelihood that local police would readily fall in line with state and federal guidelines for aggressive conduct toward political dissenters and public marches or protests.  If armed U.S. Marshals obeyed orders to serve a late-night letter warning to fired DOJ attorney Liz Oyer not to testify before a Congressional panel, local police would likely be equally, if not eagerly, compliant with improper or illegal orders.  A pertinent article is “Trump’s Crackdown on Protests is Spreading to Local Law Enforcement.”]

 

After Trump’s 5 November election and his 20 January inauguration, Democrats were in dismay, understandably, and in disarray, unfortunately.  They found fault with Biden, Harris, Schumer, Jeffries, the Democratic National Committee, and the man behind the tree.  They attributed the loss of the election to the losses of voters in some demographic groups, notably, young Black men, young Hispanic men, and white women.  They bewailed their differences about messages or the lack of means to target messages to these groups and the working class.  The Democratic Party united in grief and divided in analyses of its political impotence at all levels of government.  Why?  Mostly tradition.

 

About ninety years ago, Will Rogers quipped, “I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.”  Indeed, the Democratic Party is not organized.  It has operated by political quilt-making, stitching together selected patches (groups) to make a comforter (party).  For decades, it has targeted and won diverse demographic groups, especially Blacks and Jews.  More recently, it has targeted and won over other groups, including Hispanics; white, suburban, college-educated women (formerly, soccer moms); and LGBTQ+ individuals; and tried to win Taylor Swift fans and NFL game-day tailgaters.  It has also been content to win in a few geographic areas, mainly the East Coast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest.  This approach failed in 2024, when the Party lost votes among these groups and a few of states in these areas, for three reasons.  It failed to appeal to diverse demographic and geographic groups with a cogent philosophy, coherent platform, or compelling talking points.  By emphasizing culture war and identity politics issues, it failed to emphasize issues important to most Americans.

 

To appeal to a broader electorate, the Democratic Party must appeal across the breadth of the electorate without regard for demographic enclaves.  (I use the word “must” throughout as a shorthand for “I strongly recommend.”)  It must unlearn the lessons taught by past successes which no longer lead to present successes.  It must expand its campaign not only to retain blue states, but also to reach red states.  It must no longer divide and conquer by tailoring different messages to different groups of voters and hope to win presidential elections.  It must not make assumptions about voters on the basis of their geographical location, political affiliation, or special interests.  It must think of voters as American citizens who have shared concerns and commitments, and who want a government of, for, and by the people.  AOC and Sanders are doing it right.  Said AOC recently: “I don’t think this is Trump country; I think this is our country.”

 

*      *      *

 

To make this appeal, the Democratic Party must approach the 2026 mid-term elections with two main messages.  First, it has sensible proposals for dealing with voters’ primary concerns: the economy and inflation; employment and unions; health care and abortion; education; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other safety-net concerns; public safety and immigration; energy; climate change; the environment; international trade; and national defense.  Given the damage being done to federal departments and agencies, it must pledge to undertake their robust recovery and return to effective and efficient operations.  Since most voters favor the Party’s positions on their primary concerns, the Party must emphasize its proposals and de-emphasize, though not avoid, its positions on issues like gun safety, LGBTQ+ , DEI, and “woke.”

 

Second, the Democratic Party will enact legislation to address voters’ primary concerns if, by free and fair elections, its candidates, with “the consent of the governed,” become a majority of their elected representatives.  This linkage is necessary not only to avoid talking vaguely about a Republican threat to democracy, but also to attack Republican efforts to manipulate “consent” by rigging elections of candidates opposed to the positions which most voters favor.  It must stress that national or statewide efforts to limit the franchise or hinder voting are efforts to enable a minority of voters to elect representatives who will reject legislation addressing the majority’s primary concerns.  It must attack anti-democratic proposals, like the SAVE Act or Trump’s 25 March Executive Order, which require proof of citizenship or residency, demand hard-to-obtain or expensive documents like birth certificates or passports; limit the times and places to register or vote; and intervene or interrupt the casting, receipt, or counting of ballots.  (This Executive Order is mostly bluster because the President has no say in how states run their elections.).

 

*      *      *

 

At present, Democrats place their collective hope—not an unreasonable one given the many opportunities which Trump, his Cabinet Secretaries, and Elon Musk and his muskrats provide—in the off-year House and Senatorial elections in 2026.  Those elections might take place—most autocrats need their legitimization—, but, if so, they might be decided by pre-election “fixes” before votes are cast.  Indeed, Trump seems to be inviting foreign—Russian, Iranian, Chinese—penetration of voting systems to manipulate the vote by having DHS disband the Cyber Safety Review Board of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which protects voting systems from hacking.  However, elections might not take place if Trump fears that Republicans might lose control of the House or the Senate, not to mention both.

 

Trump can urge Elon Musk to support House and Senate Republican candidates.  An average House contribution of $2.5 million in half the races (218) and an average Senate contribution of $7.5 million in half the races (17)—total cost, only $672,500,000—might secure super-majorities in both Congressional chambers.  At this rate, less than a half percent of Musk’s wealth, more than compensated by more or larger government contracts, might ensure Republican dominance of the federal government throughout and beyond his lifetime.  The havoc that Republican super-majorities could wreak with Constitutional amendments, the approval of which by the states which Musk can fund, is easy to imagine.  Or Musk can fund state campaigns calling for a constitutional convention to enable drafting a new constitution from scratch.  Trump’s remarks about a third term, not only suggest his unwillingness to be a lame duck, even if only for two years, but also make sense in terms of Republican super-majorities able to quickly amend or re-write the Constitution after the mid-term elections.

 

Aside from the aforementioned ways within the electoral system, Trump has other ways to  advance the election of House and Senate Republican candidates.  As the resistance to Trump’s capricious and destructive executive actions grows, he may become increasingly desperate and reckless, and resort to increasingly desperate and reckless measures.  He can signal domestic terrorist groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, still standing back but standing by, to disrupt urban voting sites and serve as pretexts for intervention by police.  He can direct the Department of Justice to have the FBI assign agents to infiltrate, investigate, and thereby intimidate voting rights groups.  He can invoke the Insurrection Act to use active-duty military or National Guard units to suppress demonstrations or intimidate voters at election sites.

 

Given these possibilities and others which I cannot imagine, I worry that the harder the Democrats try to win the 2026 elections, the more likely Trump and Musk will take more drastic steps to make it harder for them to win.  Yet the Democrats have no choice but to try to make an overwhelming appeal to the electorate.  I repeat: that appeal depends on its vigorous advocacy of widely approved policies in domestic and foreign affairs, and resolute protection of democratic practices to enable enactment of those policies.

 

Democrats can also appeal to the value which Americans place on their independence by framing the choice between candidates as a question: who makes the decisions?  Democrats elected by the entire franchise—“the consent of [all] the governed”—to enact majority positions or Republicans elected by a fraction of the franchise to impose minority positions.  They must stress that, without democratic governance, the majority’s interests (listed above) are not likely to be advanced, as they have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans for many years.  Thus they connect the general issue of decision-making to the actual decisions which must be made about what serves the interests of the people and the nation, not the interests of oligarchs with an authoritarian leader.

DEFINING ANTISEMITISM IN THE TIME OF TRUMP

     For suspect reasons—the 2022 election fell ten weeks later—, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed “Executive Order 2022-118: Adopting Working Definition of Antisemitism.”  Since there are probably too few Jews concentrated in any voting district, much less in the state, to swing any election one way or the other, scoring political points with New Mexico’s Jews seems an unlikely motive.

My blog at the time (16 Oct 2022) addressed the circumstances and possible motives of this E.O., not its technical merits.  I reserved that analysis until a second blog (29 Nov 2023), which was well received in certain quarters.  My criticisms then are among those now, as the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the E.O. incorporates by reference, suffers diminishing regard since it was adopted in 2016, when something, almost anything, was needed as antisemitism greatly increased in the second decade of the 21^st century.

 

My first criticism of the IHRA “working definition” concerned its vague language.  I wrote, “imprecise language suggests that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.  However, much depends on the specific nature of that criticism.  Without its specification, some critics of Israel might be improperly and painfully suspected or accused of antisemitism though they are not.  That possibility is intimidating and thus infringes on free speech.”  This criticism points to another and larger failing of the IHRA definition: it is not a definition at all.  Instead, it is a list of “manifestations,” words or deeds labeled as antisemitic.  The problems with such a list are that it includes items which are not antisemitic, excludes items which are antisemitic, and provides no guidance for anything which is not obviously one or the other.

 

Whatever else may be said about my recommended definition—a cluster of beliefs, feelings, and actions which are adverse to Jews as individuals, groups, or the State of Israel because they are Jews or Jewish; which assume or imply the moral or religious imperfection, inferiority, or unworthiness of Jews or Jewish beliefs or practices; which denigrate, distort, or deny the Jewish historical experience; which apply double or differentiating standards in judging or treating Jews or Israel; or which exploit Jews for ulterior motives—, it does not present these problems.

 

However important it is to have a good definition of antisemitism as a guide to ascertaining what is or is not antisemitic, having such a definition is only a necessary starting point.  What matters is how we deal with antisemitic words, deeds, or persons.  After an antisemitic event, public condemnation is always appropriate.  Criminalizing the antisemitic hate which motivates the criminal words and deeds directed at Jews or their institutions—i.e., as “hate crimes”—is, to my way of thinking, never appropriate.  First, in themselves, motives are not crimes.  Second, making the “hate” of antisemitism a crime implicitly treats Jews differently under the law from others who have crimes committed against them because of other kinds of hate; though thought to be “favorable” to Jews, this differential treatment under the law is antisemitic.

 

Under Trump, there has been a resurgence of antisemitic incidents like the attacks on Jews at the Pittsburg Tree of Life synagogue (2018) or the Chabad of Poway synagogue (2019) during his first term.  Public reaction to these and other antisemitic events was their condemnation as “unacceptable.”  Almost everyone, antisemite or not, knows that antisemitism, however expressed, is not publicly acceptable, and tries to avoid the accusation.  Antisemites deny it.  So it takes some work—collecting data and interpreting them as evidence—to make the accusation responsibly.  And this work returns us to a good definition of antisemitism.

 

Meanwhile, accusations of antisemitism from Trump or his staff cannot be regarded as reflecting sincere opposition to it.  I doubt that Trump, his JINO (Jew in name only) policy adviser Stephen Miller, or other staff have any understanding of antisemitism, much less its nuances, or care one way or the other about it.  Case in point: Trump did not object to antisemitic words, symbols, and flags used by the Charlottesville, VA, marchers (2017).

 

Recently, Trump, staff, and others have criticized campus demonstrations opposing Israel’s conduct of the war or sympathizing with or supporting Gazan civilians as antisemitic.  They accept that these positions are antisemitic though, at most, the IHRA “working definition” only verges on suggesting they might be—which is why many reject it.)  First, Congressional Republicans conducted hearings on how Columbia, Pennsylvania, and MIT handled antisemitism on campus generally, in demonstrations particularly.  Then, Trump used antisemitism as a smear of protesters, many, if not most, of whom are not antisemitic, and as a pretext to curtail funding or investigate universities in order to stifle free speech and academic freedom.  In doing so, he singled out Jews by making them the reason for the punishment of protesters and campuses alike.  In the name of fighting antisemitism, he advanced it by abetting resentment at Jews.  In short, Trump weaponized antisemitism, not to oppose antisemitism, but to exploit it for his ulterior political and personal purposes—antisemitism to be expected of Trump.

 

Just as Trump has made and repeated accusations that the 2020 election was stolen because of voter fraud without actually providing any evidence, so he accuses campus demonstrators of being antisemites, disregarding the fact that many of them, professors and students, are Jews.  His and his staff’s accusation that demonstrators opposing Israeli military operations in Gaza or showing sympathy or support for Palestinian civilians support Hamas—admittedly, a few did—shows their disregard of the truth.  When politics is involved, a good definition of antisemitism is no assurance that, in the name of fighting antisemitism, it will not be abused.  But it might help if politicians take care in using it to oppose antisemitism.

 

Regrettably, nothing in the IHRA “working definition” or Governor Grisham’s Executive Order addresses a situation or an antisemite like this one.  Unlike my definition, neither document addresses the existence of institutional or structural antisemitism, or offers guidance for dealing with it.  If Governor Grisham or Attorney General Raúl Torrez mean to respond to, if not also hinder, antisemitism, they should revise Executive Order 2022-118 as a first step not only to handling everyday incidents and agents of antisemitism, but also to preparing for unnoticed or unusual situations and atypical antisemites.

      The practical importance of a sensible understanding and definition of antisemitism became clear in a court ruling Friday.  Louisiana immigration judge Jamee Comans ruled that the government can deport Mahmoud Khalil.  I quote from the NPR account:

 

Khalil, who as a Columbia University graduate student led pro-Palestinian protests there last year, was detained last month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Khalil had engaged in "antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students in the U.S."

 

In an undated 2-page memo submitted to the court, Rubio detailed that on March 7 he got information about Khalil from the Department of Homeland Security and as a result he determined that allowing Khalil to remain in the country would undermine a U.S. foreign policy goal of combating antisemitism around the world.

 

The focus of the demonstrations at Columbia was on Israeli warmaking and Palestinian suffering, with advocacy of a Palestinian state.  Some of the protesters’ placards and slogans can be interpreted as anti-Israeli and antisemitic.  But anti-Israeli speech is not antisemitic speech, and antisemitic speech is free speech protected by the First Amendment, for citizens and non-citizens alike.  No doubt, protests which are or are perceived to be antisemitic might well alarm and frighten Jews, students and professors alike, at Columbia.  But their reactions constitute a “heckler’s veto,” which is legally ruled out as a reason for suppressing otherwise free speech.

 

Khalil’s participation in the protests—as Rubio represents them, “disruptive activities”—which he led did not result in detention or charges of disorderly conduct or property destruction.  In this context, Rubio’s claim that Khalil’s continued presence in the United States would undermine any aspect of U.S. foreign policy is an absurdity and an exaggeration, which, to be believed, assumes that the policy is a very weak one.  His claim that “a U.S. foreign policy goal [is] combating antisemitism around the world” is simply a lie.  It has nowhere been stated, and it has nowhere been pursued.  If the U.S. enforced such a policy it would have dealt with Elon Musk for his repeated antisemitic tweets on X and his support of Germany’s AfD, a party which denies its known antisemitic pre-dispositions.

 

In short, the Trump administration has no concept of antisemitism; it has only a term of bigotry to use as a political weapon, to wield against its enemies and to set aside for friends.