Maybe you recognize the name and face of David Brooks. He's a conservative columnist for the New York Times and the intellectual conservative voice paired with a liberal on the Friday night news commentary on the PBS News Hour. Even if he's not actually one of the Brooks Brothers, he looks like he was born in a Brooks Brothers suit. He is not exactly a revolutionary guy. The strongest banner he could come up with for his latest column repeats the words "Not Normal."
Nevertheless his latest Times column says this: "It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement."
He makes his case at some length and ends with a line that echoes words by someone he may never have quoted before: "We have nothing to lose but our chains."
He is of course referring to organized resistance against King Chaos. And he is saying pretty much what Rachel Maddow has been saying every day on MSNBC. Consider Rachel and Brooks on the same side of the barricade. That's where we are at the end of this week.
This week has been notable for several rhetorical threats to basic Constitutional rights by King Chaos and his minions, including Chaos and his Lord High Executioner Musk saying they would "love" to send American citizens to El Salvador gulags. And please note this non-technicality: it is not a prison. It is by strict definition a concentration camp: it is a place where inmates "are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process," according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Inmates there are not "incarcerated" which means confined after trial and conviction for a stated period under law, and with legal rights. In El Salvador they are held indefinitely and incommunicado without the most basic legal and human rights. The term for that is "liquidated." Just as they were not "deported," which requires hearings and a finding and a legal process. These men were kidnapped and disappeared.
This week has also been notable for two strong court decisions and three very strong and very clear federal court opinions, two of them in the case of Abrego Garcia, including the most important so far by an honored conservative judge of the 4th District Court of Appeals appointed by Reagan. They are clear and direct.
This week will also be remembered for the publication of two documents: a letter sent by the Chaos White House to Harvard, expressing its comprehensive and self-contradictory demands, and Harvard's letter in response refusing to accede to those obviously unconstitutional demands. Those demands were then clearly revealed as extortion, when the Chaos administration withdrew a couple of billion dollars of federal support for Harvard (including support for its Public Health school and Medical school and research), and then threatened to revoke the university's tax exempt status and disallow its international students, more violations of yet more laws.
Harvard's stand emboldened other universities, some of which are planning ahead of time and banding together in mutual defense treaties, or academic NATOs. A couple of big law firms have also resisted and taken Chaos to court--and won. Now others are looking to create self-defense alliances, and even some that capitulated are taking another look at their agreements.
Less publicized but perhaps just as consequential, the state of California has sued the Chaos administration because their tariffs are unconstitutional. California is the country's leading agricultural and manufacturing state, and seeks relief from economic harm caused by these illegal tariffs. That counts a lot in court.
The chair of the Federal Reserve reported on the economic outlook, placing his considerable authority behind the predictions of likely stagflation caused by the tariffs. King Chaos responded by vilifying him and calling for his removal.
But it is the Harvard refusal that is causing the most excitement, and has the greater symbolic power, not only because it is the premier university in the country with many powerful alumni, but because it is the oldest--it is about 150 years older than the Constitution--and it is in that part of the country where America first rebelled against the tyranny of a king.
This weekend also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the first engagements in that rebellion: The "one if by land, two if by sea" lanterns in Boston's Old North Church and Paul Revere's ride, and then the battles of Lexington and Concord.
This Saturday is another nationally scheduled day for demonstrations across the country, at state houses and court houses in all fifty states. This time the theme is simply: No Kings. Consider this your Paul Revere alert.
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