What if Trump Wins: Defending Existing Institutions

 

Category	Activity
Protect people being targeted	Mutual aid society Fundraising for nonprofits Underground railroad
Defend existing institutions	Outreach to veterans/families/military Citizen scientist to assist EPA Find grants to strengthen elections
Envision what comes after Trump	Cultural/psychological grounding Constitutional convention
Resistance	Paperclip movement among civil servants Strikes Tax resistance

Defend existing institutions

The introduction on defending institutions is really quite similar to the introduction on protecting people being targeted.  Instead of immigration raids, cut to healthcare spending, and rising hate crimes, this section has funds pulled from public schools, far right judges appointed, threats to independent media, and purges of the federal workforce.  Some of these targets, like the federal workforce, are governmental.  Some, like judges and schools, are also governmental, but outside normal executive function.  And some, like independent media, are clearly non-governmental.  It all sounds accurate enough, to say nothing of attacks on targets the authors never even thought of, such as elite law firms, universities, and tech companies.  While the damage to the vulnerable is less immediate and obvious than immigration raids and healthcare cuts, the damage to the social fabric is absolutely real and, over the longer run, highly damaging and disarm the institutions that might reign Trump in.   

But what can we do about it?  In the real world, most of the defense of institutions is taking place in the courts, out of reach of the general public.*  The authors make three suggestions -- organize veterans and their families, supplement federal regulators with scientific testing, and protect elections.  As mentioned before, I was surprised at the focus on governmental institutions -- the Deep State if you will -- when it seemed to me that Trump poses a threat to all institutions, governmental or not.  And the vast flourishing of non-governmental organizations is what makes America truly great.  But thinking it over more, I do believe that maintaining the independence of the "deep state" is vital to preserving the rule of law.  So by all means, let us sign up to preserve it.

Organize veteran families

The authors postulate that the military is being pulled two ways -- between higher officers who are old-style institutionalists, but also bound to obey orders, and the rank-and-file who are more pro-Trump.  They have officers "slow walk" plans to leave NATO, generals fired and even a first lieutenant (!) named Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  We haven't got to the first lieutenant yet, Pete Hegseth is clearly purging the top ranks and thwarting promotion of anyone who is not white and male.  We also have the military committing war crimes on the high seas and in bombing Iran.  

In any event, the authors propose that you talk to veterans and their organizations and families about the need for the military to stay out of partisan politics and the fearful danger that they might be called on to fire on US citizens.  They imagine a lot of quiet persuasion taking place outside the public eye, like talking to a colonel's wife about how to keep her husband from getting too Trumpy.  And non-commissioned officers expose rightwing extremists in their ranks planning to use a rightwing militia attack on Black business as cover "for more extreme efforts," whatever that means.  (Once again those rightwing terrorists make an appearance).

In protecting people being targeted, the authors offer the choice of staying small, nimble, and local; scaling up on a local level; or going national.  For institution, they offer only the options of staying "small, nimble, and quiet" or becoming larger and open.  In the military instance, there are excellent reasons to stay quiet.  "Being quiet allows you to have some intimate conversations with people inside the military you might miss if you are more open."  A very realistic concern in this case.  Becoming more open appears to mean going onto social media and attracting volunteers.  It calls for taking classes in digital security to avoid doxing.  But the outreach remains private.  The only real difference the authors propose is that if you go public, you can refer the colonel's wife to a network instead of just giving her personal suggestions.  The basic need to stay quiet remains.

I am assuming this proposal is based on calls for retired generals to denounce inappropriate or unlawful acts by Trump.  While there have been occasional reminders that soldiers do not have to obey unlawful behavior, retired military officers have been disturbingly quiet.

Citizen scientists

Team Trump is both relaxing regulatory standards and firing so many regulators as to obstruct enforcement of even the most relaxed standards.  He is particularly protective of pollution from coal.  All of this is spot-on, of course, and highly predictable.  Citizen scientists can do their own environmental testing to supplement an overtaxed EPA and give it guidance in setting priorities.  As in other cases, the authors try to be realistic by starting small -- testing proves serious hazards from a coal fired plant, and it is made to pay a small fine.  As work begins to scale up, climate-change-caused fires put in another appearance.  This time you are able to do real-time tracking that is vital to the public's health and safety.

The authors treat the decision whether to stay small or scale up similarly to the military -- staying small allows you to have intimate conversations you might otherwise miss; going public requires digital security to avoid doxing.  But really, this work seems a lot less dangerous than outreach to the military.  I suppose some EPA employees might face retaliation if word gets out that they are receiving input from citizen scientists. But this just isn't subversive in the same way that military outreach is.  The decision whether to stay local or scale up here is treated similarly to how it is treated with mutual aid.  Stay local and you can persuade your town to rewrite its ordinances to block expansion of some factories and plant more trees.  Scale up, and you can attract participants across the country and get funding and interns from a university.  

Incidentally, this is one of the very few cases other than the elections section that mentions local government.  In the emergency fundraising section, local government puts in a brief appearance for being too sluggish in offering loans to people whose businesses burned down.  In the back section of news stories, state and local government step up to enforce anti-discrimination laws when the federal government refuses.  And there are sanctuary jurisdictions and states that mobilize the National Guard against immigration.  But local government only really comes into focus into the elections section, and necessarily so.  US elections are administered at the county level.

Protect elections

This is obviously very important.  Indeed, the survival of democracy rests upon it.  If the book's 11 options were my real-life choices, this is the one I would choose.  Election workers have faced scrutiny, pressure, and even threats on Trump's say-so.  The authors descend into specifics here.  They recommend a Protect Our Elections report and threats to election workers in Washoe County, Nevada.  I assume this is a real report and real incident.  One major problem is a lack of funding.  Public funding has been cut and some states have banned private funding.  (Certainly, the senior attorney at my office views private funding with extreme suspicion and makes cracks about "Zucherbucks.").  So, you search for grant money, which apparently is out there, though wholly uncoordinated.  How that is reconciled with a ban on private funding is not addressed.  But, once again, the story starts small as you obtain a $500 grant for the local office.  You go to work on finding what grants are out there and assembling the information into digestible form.  Thanks to the grants, election infrastructure strengthens.  Workers can improve trust by explaining the election infrastructure safety, security, and responsiveness ahead of the election instead of after.  Climate-change-caused fires make another appearance, this time destroying mail-in ballots, but you are able to replace them quickly.  

Scaling up once again requires digital security, but attracts more volunteers.  I was at first dismissive of the need.  This is not a secretive, semi-legal campaign of potential subversion like the military outreach.  It is wholly legal and appropriate.  That was uncommonly naive of me.  In light of recent cries of election fraud and FBI raids on voting rights groups, this is actually quite potentially dangerous work.  Unlike other cases, the authors appear to see scaling up as clearly the better course.  Staying local means passing around a spreadsheet of grant opportunities and makes for a modest strengthening of the local infrastructure.  Going national means setting up a nationally known clearinghouse of grant opportunities and a website where applicants can pre-qualify.  This differs from, say mutual aid or environmental activism in that it deals entirely in knowledge, which can be frictionlessly spread nationwide.  However, non-presidential elections are mentioned only in passing (mention that the midterms are coming up, ballots having to be replaced) and says nothing whatever about the outcome of any non-presidential election.

I will make a few more comments about the helping and protecting sections.  The protect people sections all begin with immigration and move on.  None of the defend institutions actions discuss immigrants at all.  Times rightwing militias burning buildings come up -- four, in all three protect people scenarios and the military outreach scenario.  Number of times climate-change-related fires come up -- also four, in the mutual aid society, joint emergency fundraising, environmental protection, and elections sections.  No militia attacks on voters, though, perhaps surprisingly.

Now on to envisioning the future and offering resistance.  Rightwing militias and climate-change-related fires will drop out.

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*The authors recognize as much, having Trump's attempts to replace 50,000 to 100,000 federal employees delayed by the courts but eventually go through.