Back when the fight of the day was gay marriage, I read someone commenting that the problem with today's left is that they are desperately looking for a new Civil Rights Movement -- a heroic struggle against oppression, and keep turning what are really mundane disputes of policy into the new Civil Rights.
Gay marriage is one such example. Certainly, one can be in favor of it and still acknowledge that it is going a bit far to call it the defining moral issue of our day, rather than a relatively mundane policy dispute. And the reason it really was dangerous to treat gay marriage as the defining moral issue of the day is that advocates had an unfortunate tendency to treat one's stance on the issue as the sole defining question of who was and was not a good person, and opposition as placing people wholly outside the bounds of reasonable discourse. That seems a bid harsh for what was, after all, quite a radical redefinition of the meaning of marriage. And it disallowed intermediate positions, such as favoring gay marriage while recognizing that people of good will could disagree, or favoring gay marriage but recognizing the rights of conscientious objectors. And in the end, I actually think the Supreme Court reached a good compromise -- gay marriage is the law of the land, but on one should be required to participate in and "expressive" manner. The controversy has largely subsided.
The same goes for transgenderism. Once disputes over gay marriage subsided, our side set out to make transgenderism the new Civil Rights Movement. Again, sorry, but the issue of whether a handful of athletes have to play on the team of their natal sex, or what conditions (if any) should be placed on puberty blockers for minors fit well within the realm of normal policy disputes.
Plenty of other Trump actions fit in the same category. Disputes of whether Congress should cut Medicaid or withdraw clean energy subsidies, or make budgetary rescissions, are policy dispute. Some of these are really bad policies that will hurt a lot of innocent people, but they are not threats to our constitutional order. The Trump tariffs are a threat to our constitutional order in the sense that they threaten the legislature's power of the purse, a provision in effect since the Middle Ages. But if Congress were to pass such taxes, it would be a policy dispute -- bad policy, but nonetheless lawful.
Immigration is a different matter. Masked men without uniforms are randomly snatching people off the streets and sending them off to unknown locations, deliberately hiding where they are to deny them a day in court. People with legal status are having it stripped away without notice. People who comply with immigration laws are being arrested at check-ins, arrested at court hearings, arrested at naturalization ceremonies. Central to the viewpoint of not just the relevant Trump officials, but to MAGA in general is that non-citizens have no rights, that recognizing any rights in non-citizens somehow degrades the rights of citizens, and that while citizens do have rights, those rights do not include the right to suggest that non-citizens have any sort of rights, or to protect them. Not only have ICE officials engaged in egregious violations of the rights of immigrants, but most infringements on the rights of citizens have also involved the issue of immigration.
Thus far -- and those words do a lot of heavy lifting these days, but thus far the Trump Administration has shown no disposition to criminalize the opposition -- except on immigration. Thus far the only opposing politicians to have been arrested have been ones who got on the wrong side of ICE. Thus far our independent media have remained independent and the Trump Administration had only succeeded in getting one journalist fired -- Terry Moran of ABC, for his comments about Stephen Miller, the mastermind behind the deportation regime. Thus far the Administration has shown no tendency to crack down on protests -- except where immigration is concerned.
Thus far there has been no widespread attempt to shut down opposing organizations by denying their tax-exempt status, possibly because safeguards in place make that extremely difficult. One of the proposals in the latest budget monstrosity is one that was defeated before and would give the IRS unilateral authority to declare any non-profit to be a supporter of terrorists and not only strip it of its non-profit status, but seize its assets. The organization would not be able to appeal the decision to the courts for 90 days, and in the meantime would be rendered powerless by the seizure of its assets. If this outrage passes, I have no idea how far Team Trump will use it in attempting to shut down the opposition, but can anyone doubt that it will be immediately deployed against every organization the defends immigrant rights?
In short, immigration is where the greatest danger is, both at the mass and the elite level. That is where we must take on the Administration and we must defeat it. And I believe we can, though how long it will take and at what cost I cannot venture a guess.
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