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Dear Congressional Democrats: What the Hell Have You Been Doing?

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Is This Your Definition of Courage in The Age of Fascism?

Dear Congressional Democrats, and Senate Democrats in particular:

I’m sorry to be crass, but, what the hell have you been doing this week?

What happened to forming an opposition party? What happened to standing up for freedom and science and free speech and education and reproductive freedom and everything else you promised us?

In his first week President Donald Trump has attacked reproductive rights around the world and placed limits on the free speech rights of government employees. He and his staff have blatantly lied about voter fraud and his divestment from his businesses. His staff admitted they will never release his tax returns. 

He’s also begun the process on building the wall and placing a religious litmus test on immigration by Muslim refugees, and he’s moving forward with the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL Pipeline, despite serious conflicts of interest. He’s even threatened to invade an American city. 

And what have y’all been doing in the meantime? You’ve voted to confirm his cabinet picks – even the ones who’ve said that they themselves aren’t qualified to run a federal agency. 

Is that your definition of courage in this age of fascism?

This past Saturday millions of women and allies around the world marched in favor of reproductive rights, equality, inclusion, and safety. They marched against misogyny, and fascism, and racism, and exclusion. And this week? You’ve blatantly ignored them.

Many of you have tried to justify your lack of conviction by saying that the numbers in the Senate simply don’t exist to combat Trump’s agenda. Ok, I get that we’re not going to win many votes and we’re not going to be able to block most of these nominees. I understand that. But knowing you’re not going to win the fight and not trying at all are two very different things. 

No one is keeping you silent. There are TV cameras and microphones everywhere. You’ve got Twitter, and Facebook, and email. You have points of privilege on the Senate floor and procedural tactics and more ways to make yourself heard in this debate than anyone else in the world.

You have absolutely no excuse not to speak out.

Look, the rest of us are doing the best we can out here on the streets and in the trenches, but we can’t do this without you. We’re even calling your offices every single day, but you’re not listening. We’re doing everything we can as private citizens, but it’s not enough.

I understand you think you need to play nice. I understand that you’ve convinced yourself that if you’re just a little bit nicer to the folks with power they’ll share some of it with you and you’ll be ok. You won’t be. We won’t be. History has shown that to be true.

The American people are counting on you now to stop being so timid. We want to see a politician who’s willing to stand up and say, “This is more important than re-election. I want to speak now,” and follow through.

We’ve given you an incredible opportunity, and you’re all wasting it. We’ve given you the power to represent our hopes, concerns, fears, and livelihoods and the power to act on our behalf, and you’re not doing it.

We’re counting on you to stand up and act like the leaders you’ve claimed to be. We’re looking for you to be the clarion call for all of the principles we hold dear. 

These next four years are going to be challenging and demoralizing and unlike any fight we’ve ever seen. If you give up now, you’re betraying everyone who voted for you. 

We need you. 

  

Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBTQ activist, educator, and writer. He’ll quote The West Wing any chance he gets. He also wanted to use the “As if it matters how a man falls down” quote, but that one seemed a bit too depressing for this piece. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed

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BREAKING NEWS

Trump Files Sweeping Legal Motion to Try to Block Georgia Grand Jury Findings and District Attorney Fani Willis

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March 20, 2023

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Attorneys for Donald Trump Monday morning filed a sweeping 483-page legal motion asking a Georgia court to block any report from the Fulton County special grand jury and any evidence the grand jury may find, and to force District Attorney Fani Willis to recuse in the investigation into his unlawful attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state.

The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery first reported the filing. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reports Trump’s attorneys have filed the motion.

Lawfare Blog’s Anna Bower, who has been covering the Fulton County case, calls the filing “mammoth.”

The news comes just hours after reports District Attorney Willis could be considering RICO, or conspiracy and racketeering charges against Trump.

READ MORE: ‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

This is a breaking news and developing story. 

Image via Shutterstock

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‘RICO’: Trump Could Be Facing Racketeering and Conspiracy Charges Used to Prosecute Organized Crime

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2 hours ago

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March 20, 2023

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Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly considering RICO charges against Donald Trump in her probe of his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, CNN reports. RICO charges are generally used when prosecuting organized crime cases.

“The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis had said last year about a different case. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a law professor and an NBC News/MSNBC contributor, Monday morning on Twitter, pointing to CNN’s report, said Willis “is seriously considering a RICO charge.” She repeated that claim on MSNBC shortly after.

READ MORE: Experts Warn Trump Is Encouraging Violence One Day After He Announces Rally at Waco on 30th Anniversary of Siege

CNN reports, “Investigators have a large volume of substantial evidence related to a possible conspiracy from inside and outside the state, including recordings of phone calls, emails, text messages, documents, and testimony before a special grand jury. Their work, the source said, underscores the belief that the push to help Trump was not just a grassroots effort that originated inside the state.”

On-air Monday morning, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, explained conspiracy, racketeering, and RICO, saying, “conspiracy” is “a loaded word. But all it really means is an agreement, a meeting of the minds between two or more people to commit a crime.”

But he added, “if we go up to racketeering, now, this is a really powerful tool the prosecutors use. What you have to do is show two things. First of all, the existence of what we call a racketeering enterprise, that can be a Mafia family, that can be a drug trafficking organization, but it could also be a corporation or a political entity, and then you have to show that they engage in what we call a pattern of racketeering activity, meaning that they committed two or more crimes in an organized fashion, which brings us to this other new piece of information. There’s a third phone call we already know about, of course, the infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger. ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’ There’s also a public recording of Donald Trump talking to this investigator, Francis Watson, when he tells her, ‘when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.'”

READ MORE: ‘Reacting to a Cult Leader’: Trump Supporters Organizing to ‘Stock Up on Weaponry’ Says GOP Adviser

“Now we know, Trump also called the former Georgia Speaker of the House asking him to convene a special session,” Honig continued. “As we know we’ve heard from some of the grand jurors special grand jurors who’ve come out, they’ve told us that they recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

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‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

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3 hours ago

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March 20, 2023

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George Conway ripped Republicans for defending lifelong “criminal” Donald Trump against a looming indictment in New York.

The ex-president apparently expects to be charged in the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff, and the conservative attorney told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he richly deserves it.

“The Republicans are behaving like complete disgraces,” Conway said. “They’re basically saying that, by saying that Trump is being persecuted, they’re essentially saying, you can’t touch Trump and Trump is above the law. Whatever slack you might have wanted to cut a former president, that was gone after Jan. 6. This man is a recidivist criminal, he’s committed fraud all his life, he’s lied all of his life.”

“This Stormy Daniels thing was something he cooked up,” Conway added. “The notion that [Michael] Cohen is going to be discredited on it is ridiculous given the paper trail. We see the checks signed by Donald Trump. It’s hard to say he is being picked on for paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and concealing that and using a straw donor, which was Cohen, to do that, and saying he’s being persecuted somehow when no one has ever done that it is completely ridiculous.”

RELATED: Georgia weighs slapping Trump with racketeering charges: CNN

Watch the video below or at this link.


 

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