By Michael Woyton
Remember the last time the government was set to run out of funding?
Sure you do. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, instead of writing a strongly worded letter, sweet talked enough of his Democratic colleagues to vote with the GOPmagas to advance the continuing resolution and thereby prevent a government shutdown.
Chuck’s rationale, in part, was that shutting down the government would give the felon-in-chief “even much more power.”
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How’s that worked out for us?
In the interim, the ultra-right-wing Supreme Court continues to tell the Oval Office grifter that he can pretty much do whatever he wants. He continues to pull congressionally approved spending, threaten and actually fire the heads of supposedly independent agencies, order his law enforcement goons the Justice Department to harass people who were mean to him and call up the National Guard to patrol an ever-growing list of large liberal cities, to name only some things.
The continuing resolution which was passed in March expires at the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.
That puts us squarely on course for another showdown with the question being, Will the Senate Democrats, still led by Chuck, roll over and play dead again, hoping that in 14 months the adjudicated rapist will be taught a lesson in the midterms? (If we are allowed to have elections in 14 months.)
Or will they finally grow a collective spine and do something?
In a remarkable opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday, Ezra Klein described the choice Democrats face as the deadline approaches: “Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.”
Klein takes readers through the differences between the last impending shutdown and the one upcoming.
Read the full opinion piece in the New York Times here (no paywall).
Last time the president was losing repeatedly in the courts. Also last time, Elon Musk’s DOGErs were attempting to gut the executive branch and the market was “quaking at the threat of Trump’s tariffs.”
Schumer felt that a shutdown would play into the mayor of Mar-a-Lago’s tiny fingers and give him more power.
“Not a single argument Schumer made then is valid now,” Klein wrote.
It’s painfully clear that SCOTUS, led by John Roberts, is not going to stop President Taco. DOGE is no longer making hourly headlines, due in part to Musk and Trump’s messy, public divorce. And the markets, according to Klein, “have settled into whatever this new normal is, at least for now.”
Then Klein comes in with the kicker: “But something else has changed, too. We are no longer in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. We are in the authoritarian consolidation stage of this presidency.”
Authoritarian consolidation stage.
Look at what the leader of the free world has done lately, as outlined by Klein.
They include: firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the data didn’t make him look good, siccing his legal dogs on a California senator and a New York state attorney general, raiding the house of a former administration official turned critic, suggesting the broadcast licenses of two major TV networks be pulled.
Then there’s the monetization of the government by Trump’s family, including crypto, a jet plane, golf courses, and on and on.
Take all of the above, Klein writes, and add military occupation of major United States cities along with masked immigration “officers” disappearing people off the streets.
“This is not just how authoritarianism happens,” Klein said. “This is authoritarianism happening.”
There is so much more in Klein’s piece, which is free to read through this link,
What is the real question Klein is posing?
To me, is the current Democratic leadership — Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — up to the fight?
As Klein says, this is not a normal Republican administration.
Democrats “cannot ignore masked agents in the streets, armed troops in the cities, billions of dollars of money going into the Trump family’s pockets, an administration that spins off several scandals in a week that would have consumed other presidencies for years. If Democrats cannot make an issue out of all that, then they are screwed and so are we.”
It’s time once again for those of us who care about this country and want our democracy back to start letting our representatives in Washington know that we are paying attention.
And tell them that they sure as hell should be paying attention as well.
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Lead art: Screen grab from The Handmaid’s Tale via Hulu.
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