The Courts Cannot Save Us From Trump -- NYT Guest Essay

[ancianita]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/opinion/constitution-trump-courts.html

https://archive.ph/3Sy68

By Duncan Hosie
Mr. Hosie is a legal scholar at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

"...What can be done? The answer is not, of course, to abandon the courts entirely. Even in the face of Mr. Trump’s disrespect for the Constitution, courts have an important role, creating some friction and issuing rulings that can furnish the basis for accountability in the future. (Though the Supreme Court, as Mr. Trump has remade it, has largely abandoned even that responsibility.)

We should place less hope in the courts and more faith in politics. The midterm elections are the next major opportunity to check unconstrained executive power democratically. Direct action can also be effective. Consider Minneapolis. When federal authorities initiated aggressive, often violent immigration sweeps in the city, courts offered little shelter. Two federal judges recognized that federal agents were most likely engaging in racial profiling, but declined to halt the operation.

Activists stepped into the space that courts left open. Mutual aid networks coordinated child care and rent relief. Community members tracked ICE operations in real time. Neighbors delivered groceries to families scared to leave their homes. Bystanders interposed themselves between federal agents and those at risk of being detained. Local organizers capitalized on the disruption to shift the political dynamics in Minnesota, weakening the prospects of Republican political campaigns that had been gaining ground in the state.
This is the kind of opposition that Mr. Trump cannot neutralize through legal bravado. Decentralized community resistance cannot be summoned to court, deprived of institutional standing or worn down through legal fees.

The liberal legal tradition has long presented the courtroom as the quintessential arena for principled political resistance. That paradigm has some basis in reality. But in a moment of genuine emergency, it is inadequate. Courts can articulate principles; they cannot supply the democratic energy that gives those principles force. A constitutional order ultimately depends less on what judges are willing to say than on what people are willing to do.

[FakeNoose]

1. We have to win both the House and the Senate this November

... THEN we have a chance to right this ship.

[ancianita]

2. Absolutely. How 2026 turns out will bode well or ill for a 2028 trifecta.

If we win it, the Democratic majority of the 121st Congress can


— fast track judicial review with the goal of expanding the US Supreme Court to 13 justices;
— change rules to end the Senate filibuster
— require any congress persons on Standing Committees to pass classification background checks
-- pass the Medicare For All Act


2029: President Newsom would sign 10 congressional bills into law that would
— rescind Citizens United
— rescind Dobbs,
— expand the Voting Rights Act,
-- establish the Medicare For All Act
— establish comprehensive Immigration law that includes paths to American citizenship for all immigrants;
— clearly define domestic terrorism and its penalties.
— pass a comprehensive gun ban on military weapons and universal background checks
-- amend the Patriot Act to remove the US as a "battleground"
— require all offshore money to return to the U.S. Treasury on penalty of total confiscation
-- amend the Patriot Act


The 121st Congress would pass 4 amendments for 50-state ratification:
— a 28th Amendment on Presidential Immunity that bans immunity for “official acts” subject to criminal and civil law, and
— a 29th Amendment as the ERA Amendment,
— a 30th Amendment that a) rescinds Article II’s establishment of the Electoral College; and b) defines election wins by a national popular vote that's certified by secretaries of state, state governors, and CISA,
— a 31st Amendment that guarantees the right to a free public education in every state for all persons under age 18

A Democrat can dream...