The Week Ahead

Whatever else happens this week, it won’t be a great one for the Trump administration, and that’s enough for me. Not only is the Article III branch of government doing its job, but the Article I branch will also be back in business come January. Most importantly, the citizens of the United States did their job, voting in such strong numbers and so pervasively all across the country against this administration’s policies that even Donald Trump lacked the temerity to cry fraud in the election’s wake.

We’ll see if that holds up as the reality of what has happened crashes down on him. But it won’t matter. The voters have spoken. They want it to stop. The will of the voters is on full display in Georgia.

The CEO and co-founder of VoteHub, Garrett Herrin, tweeted that “Jon Ossoff would still have won Georgia’s Senate race even without Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, and Gwinnett counties.”

Here’s what won’t be happening this week: The hearing scheduled for Friday (it’s the 13th!) in the California ballot case is off. On Friday, DOJ dismissed its voter fraud case against California. The hearing would have involved scrutinizing entries on the administration’s widely criticized list of 20,000 alleged noncitizens. But this may not be the last we hear of the matter. DOJ argued during the temporary restraining order stage of the proceedings that the lawsuit would become irrelevant after Election Day, because absent sequestration, the government wouldn’t be able to identify the ballots of the people they claimed weren’t eligible to vote, even though they met the state’s criteria and federal law for registration. The government may now claim that those ballots tainted the proceedings.

Don’t expect that argument to go anywhere, though. Even if all 20,000 people on the list turned out to be noncitizens who voted (they aren’t—as we discussed, data scientists had dismissed more than half of the list at first blush as based on bad information), that would not have affected any of California’s 52 House districts. In fact, even if all 20,000 had been ineligible voters and had been in one district, it wouldn’t have affected the outcome, because these races were blowouts. Only in District One north of San Francisco— it includes counties like Shasta and Sutter—where Democrat Mike McGuire flipped a red seat blue with 97,294 votes to the incumbents’ 78,852, was the margin of victory (barely) under 20,000 votes. (It was less than that in District 4 and District 7, but those races involved two Democrats running against each other.) It’s official. The Trump administration took its best shot in California and failed miserably.

Speaking of Republicans losing, we’re still waiting on the final outcome of the Mississippi and Alaska Senate races, but it looks like Democrats will add two more seats to their tally, coming within spitting distance of a filibuster-proof majority, something no one, not even my neighbor Sarah, who was very bullish on the Senate and predicted 55-56 on election eve, even dared to speculate about.

The post-election news cycle has been so devastating for the administration that everyone has been using it to dump their worst news in hopes no one is paying attention. Susie Wiles resigned. Elon Musk will stop making Cybertrucks, which Rolling Stone Magazine called “The Chariot of the Dumbest Gods.” And, in a quiet repudiation of and an indication that the work done by DOGE early in Trump’s second term in office was ill-advised, unsuccessful, and potentially devastating, the National Weather Service has changed course from one of the measures that came out of that process. According to CBS’ Detroit newsroom, “the National Weather Service has ordered offices to resume twice daily balloon launches, so they can predict major storms.” We have discussed previously how foolish the decision to stop them, disguised as necessary cost-cutting, was. DOGE was lethal and poorly designed.

Then there is Attorney General Todd Blanche, who still doesn’t understand what his job is and should be impeached as soon as possible if he won’t resign. Appearing on Fox News after the election, he said, “You have Garcia minutes after Stephen Miller was promoted to chief of staff telling him to ‘lawyer up.’ Well I’ll tell you what. Stephen Miller has a lawyer. It’s me.” The “lawyer up” reference was to Congressman Robert Garcia, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, saying members of the administration needed to do so—an apparent reference to incoming congressional investigations come January.

News flash Mr. Attorney General: You’re the people’s lawyer. You’re no longer Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer.

Ironically, my pinned tweet spontaneously disappeared from Twitter earlier this year after being at the top of my feed for nine years. No response to my requests for clarification as to how or why that happened.

For the record, the U.S. Attorneys and the Attorney General they work for serve the American people. By statute, “The Attorney General shall give his advice and opinion on questions of law when required by the President,” but he is not the President’s personal lawyer, nor does he serve in that capacity for any of his underlings.

The idiocracy is in full swing.

Congressman Garcia, on the other hand, is taking no prisoners. He took advantage of Blanche’s bluster on Twitter to ask when he’d be dropping in to testify—under oath—about the Epstein files. ( and I will do a Substack Live Monday evening to update you on all things Epstein.)

Lisa Cook is the Fed Governor whom Trump tried to fire, only to be waved off by the Supreme Court last term. They said he couldn’t do it without giving her due process—notice and an opportunity to be heard. Trump has been back at it again with a trumped-up “committee of inquiry” supposedly considering whether she should be terminated. The committee was supposed to meet later this week, but Cook, who is capably represented by Norm Eisen and others, has asked a judge to pause those proceedings. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one and everything else touching presidential power to do away with executive branch employees and appointees he views as being insufficiently loyal to him personally.

Then there’s Trump’s stupid arch. The administration’s view seems to be that if it moves fast and breaks things, courts won’t be able to undo it. Like the ballroom. But on Thursday, Judge Tanya Chutkan entered a TRO that blocks any “construction-related activity” for 14 days. Some criticized her delay in ruling, but by waiting until the Capital Planning Commission and National Park Service approved the Trump plan, she protected her order from challenges over whether the matter was “ripe” for a decision.

Going into the week ahead, one thing has already become clear in the week of the midterm elections: Donald Trump did not, perhaps he is incapable of it, learn the lesson the voters tried to teach. Instead of engaging in any meaningful course correction, he has doubled down. Stephen Miller will be the new White House chief of staff. That means things will get worse, not better. Miller will feel comfortable carrying out his mission, knowing that a presidential pardon is in reach. He likely already has one in his hip pocket.

Instead of letting new Democratic leaders lead, the White House has already signaled its intent to try and countermand them. In Texas, the administration fired its first salvo on Friday, moving to intervene and take over a suit brought by Texas against Planned Parenthood, alleging the medical care provider engaged in fraud in violation of the Federal Tort Claims Act. According to The New York Times, Texas claims it’s entitled to recover $1.8 billion in Medicaid reimbursements, interest, and penalties, which Planned Parenthood said could put it out of business. It’s unlikely that the new leadership in Texas after the first of the year will continue the flawed lawsuit, so DOJ stepped in. DOJ had previously declined an opportunity to intervene in the case, and it’s highly unusual for it to happen in this posture.

The case, which could go to trial as early as next spring, is in front of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who you may remember from past cases.

Trump, for his part, has said he’s willing to work with Democrats. As if he believes all can be forgiven so easily. But it cannot be, and it must not be, because it’s only through accountability that we can move forward. Anyone who thought that forgiveness, erasure, and moving forward as though nothing had happened could work should have realized by now that’s no way to hold onto a democracy.

Trump is likely motivated more by fear than sincerity. Trump knows what’s coming for him. Adam Mockler pointed out on Twitter this morning, “Trump has completely deleted his year-old Truth Social post directing then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to speed up prosecutions of his perceived political opponents.” But he can’t hide. Justice is coming, even if it has taken far too long. And this Tweet, and others like it, are preserved for all time in the pleadings challenging the prosecutions of Jim Comey as vindictive and selective, among other places.

In the words of the band The Chicks:

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and I don’t have time
To go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell, can’t bring myself
To do what it is you think I should

Trump has done too much to damage our democracy, and to loot it for himself and his family, for us to just walk away. As Justice Sotomayor put it on Saturday:

Democracy doesn’t defend itself. If you believe the work we’re doing here matters, please become a paid subscriber to Civil Discourse. Your support makes it possible for me to keep doing this work, and I intend to keep doing it for as long as it takes.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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