Constitutional Crisis

Another blow to the separation of powers from the proponents of the unitary executive, or the philosophy behind Trump's expanding article 2 powers: Emmet Flood, Trump's attorney, argued in a letter today that the president's advisors work for him, and "not for the people" (that is, we taxpayers who pay their salaries). Therefore, Trump may forbid these advisers to testify before Congress. With the executive's defiance of lawful congressional subpoenas and its wholesale annexation of the judiciary in the person of AG Barr, who will "supervise" the 14 investigations referred by Mueller much as he did the Mueller report, we are galloping headlong toward an authoritarian government. We should be in the streets about this.

On Authoritarianism

I am the daughter of a family persecuted by Stalin and interred in concentration camps by Hitler. But most Americans know nothing of these things and do not heed the warning signs of authoritarianism all around them. First, it lies and erodes freedom, and then - quite suddenly - starts to arrest the opposition: intellectuals, minorities, disabled people, the press. Just by way of saying, fight now while you can.