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**MARCH 26, 2025**
On the Prospect website
Trump's Fox in the Social Security Henhouse [link removed]
His nominee to head
the SSA backs technology over people, and DOGE over seniors' needs. BY DAVID DAYEN
Bernie's 'Fighting Oligarchy' Tour Is Organizing, Too [link removed]
Capitalizing on a surge of Democratic energy, the Sanders team is hiring full-time organizers and pushing supporters toward critical local issues. BY MICAH L. SIFRY
An Abundance of Credulity [link removed]
They want abundance. But they ignore who profits most from scarcity. BY HANNAH STORY BROWN
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Where Are the Firebreaks?
As Trump continues trying to rule by decree, wreck public institutions, and intimidate his opposition, we need to be strategic in restraining him.
One firebreak is the judicial system. Dozens of cases will soon be consolidated into a few that will go up to the Supreme Court, and
we will learn whether Trump will try to defy the high court.
A second sort of firebreak is the political feedback provided by elections. The Democrats just picked up a formerly Republican state Senate seat in Pennsylvania [link removed], with a swing of 16 points from the 2024 presidential election [link removed]. In the 36th District, most of Lancaster County, Democrat James Malone beat Republican Josh Parsons by about 50 to 49 percent. In the presidential election, Trump carried the district by 15 points.
To the extent that Trump's marauding is losing public support and Democrats are astute at narrating what's occurring, electoral losses like these may get Trump's attention. They will also get the attention of other Republican elected officials.
There are two crucial elections next Tuesday. Republicans are
increasingly alarmed that their lackluster candidate, Randy Fine, could lose the House seat in Florida's deep-red Sixth District [link removed] formerly held by Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz. The Democrat, schoolteacher Josh Weil, has raised $9.7 million to Fine's $561,000, according to fundraising reports filed last week [link removed] with the Federal Election Commission.
Even more important is next Tuesday's election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will decide which party has majority control. The contest has already broken all records for campaign spending-$73 million so far, of which some $18 million has been donated by Elon Musk.
The election pits liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford against Trump ally Judge Brad Schimel of
Waukesha County, a former state attorney general. In the previous Supreme Court election in 2023, the liberal won by ten points. But in 2024, Trump carried Wisconsin by a point. Most local observers think that the election will turn on whether progressives have recovered from their funk over the lost presidential election and are re-energized by Trump's assaults.
[link removed]
YOU MIGHT THINK THAT THE ORDINARY feedback mechanisms of Republican politics would slow Trump down, but so far they have not. Trump's almost randomly destructive policies are beginning to do serious damage to ordinary people-veterans, farmers, citizens dependent on, or employed in, public services. Many of these vote Republican.
But so far, Republican representatives and senators seem more worried about being primaried by Musk's money and Trump's megaphone than about the real harm to their constituents. If Trump's own popularity continues to sink,
along with the economy and the wreckage of public services, that could change. You would have thought it would have changed by now.
Another possible firebreak is the Federal Reserve. Trump made a foray at suggesting that Fed chair Jay Powell resign. But Powell said nothing doing, and Trump backed off [link removed]. Trump has fired some independent regulatory appointees who have term appointments, including two Federal Trade Commissioners [link removed]. That's illegal, and whether Trump gets away with it will be tested in court.
But the Fed is in a whole other category. It was created by Congress as effectively a fourth branch of government. If Trump tried to fire Fed governors, not only would they refuse to go; the stock market would go into an even deeper collapse than it did in anticipation of Trump's tariff
war.
Nor does Trump have the power to threaten the Fed's budget, since these are the people who literally create money. The Fed returns money to the Treasury. Trump's minions have already begun weakening federal statistical agencies [link removed], the better to invent their own rosy statistics. The Fed, with its excellent independent research department, could also step into that breach.
I am no fan of the Fed's weak regulatory policies. But on the larger issue of restraint of tyranny, all allies are welcome.
AN AROUSED PUBLIC COULD BE the most important firebreak of all.
One question that good organizers always ask of themselves is: What is our theory of change? In this case, what are the mechanisms that might slow down Trump and his wrecking crew, and how might they be activated?
As Micah Sifry wrote
[link removed] in an important piece on prospect.org, one theory of change is to do a lot more local organizing. Joined by Bernie Sanders, AOC is emerging as the leader of a broad opposition. They need to mobilize an army of citizens as organizers, who in turn should work to organize everyone either appalled by Trump's dictatorship or harmed by his policies. Organizers need to mobilize the vets, farmers, Social Security pensioners, people filing for unemployment insurance, and others who have lost vital public services, to pressure and embarrass other Republican elected officials, and organize still more citizens.
That popular mobilization can also serve as a counterweight to Trump's success in intimidating large institutions. It can help put some spine in blue-state and -city mayors and governors, some of whom have shown toughness, such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois or Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. But
others, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are joining elite universities and law firms in attempting a futile politics of appeasement.
It's great to be organizing to try to flip 20 or 25 vulnerable Republican seats in the 2026 midterm. But given the damage that Trump has done in just two months, November 2026 is an eternity away. We need to save democracy right now, or there may not be much of an election in 2026.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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