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We’ve celebrated the fourth anniversary of Civil Discourse. We’re now entering our fifth year together. We’ve built a community of people who believe in democracy and want to act based on accurate information and knowledge about how the system works and is supposed to work, instead of on emotional reaction and misinformation. This new year, with pivotal midterm elections fast approaching, is our next challenge.
The first newsletter I ever sent out had the subject line “Civil Discourse Making a start — June 7, 2022.” Joe Biden was still the president. We were making slow progress restoring democracy. It was a hopeful moment, but looking back over those early posts, my optimism was already tempered by the concern that so many of our fellow citizens were frogs sitting in a pot of water where the temperature was slowly rising. I was becoming worried they wouldn’t jump out in time, a worry that became a reality in the 2024 presidential election, and that I wrote about in my first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual For Keeping A Democracy.
I still believe we can fix what’s broken in our country, though. Our ultimate strength is our work together and our support for each other; it’s our community of people who love democracy. I was looking back to the early days of Civil Discourse and stumbled across this exchange. Two amazing women, showing up to support a friend (me) as I embarked on a new adventure. That’s our secret power. We all show up for each other and for this country, and there’s nothing an autocrat can do when we all band together.
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Since our start here, we’ve discussed and analyzed one of the most critical eras in American history together. We will keep doing that because, of course, it doesn’t stop.
Last year at this time, we were talking about the Justice Department. After weeks of saying it couldn’t return El Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, it announced it was going to do exactly that. The government backed down from a confrontation with the Supreme Court, which had ruled 9-0 against it. Then DOJ indicted Abrego Garcia on criminal charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi made public statements about him that were inconsistent with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty that defendants in America are entitled to. Now, the charges against Abrego Garcia are dismissed, and Bondi is no longer the Attorney General. And so, we make slow progress, even as Trump’s second term in office continues.
This administration’s conduct has become so out of control that it’s no wonder Trump’s favorability ratings are now worse than Richard Nixon’s at the height of Watergate. The question is whether our friends and neighbors, faced with the increasing cost of food, housing, transportation, and medical care, will understand, like we do here, that the midterm elections offer us the best hope of imposing meaningful control on this president and his allies and starting to restore order. This is a president whose Justice Department, after all, told a federal judge that as long as it was quick enough and did it before a judge could tell it no, it could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty without facing legal repercussions.
Sean Hannity had to run a disclaimer following his on-air interview with the acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, because Blanche misstated facts regarding a cadre of people who Trump considers to be his enemy—this was part of Blanche’s audition to get Trump to nominate him for the permanent job as AG, which he did.
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In July of 2024, I wrote to you about Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025. Upon learning Democrats opposed his project, he said, “Project 2025 will not be stopped,” and Democrats are “more than welcome to try” to stop it. A few days later, he doubled down on Steve Bannon’s War Room (minus Bannon, who was in federal prison) and said: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
I have never forgotten Roberts’ comments. Was it a threat if we exercised our right to vote? Our First Amendment rights to protest? I remembered his comments when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot execution style on the streets of Minneapolis, because comments like that aren’t something you just move