You’ve probably never heard of Erica Newland. And if she had her own duchesses, it’s safe and sound to assume she’d prefer to keep it that way.
But Newland, a former lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, has become a front-line warrior in the fight to protect the Constitution from President Donald Trump’s abuses.
Newland, who is both Jewish and a civil libertarian, became increasingly uncomfortable with the administration’s attacks on foreigners. And one exchange, recounted in George Packer’s extraordinary cover story on The Atlantic:The president is winning the war against American institutions”, that’s all you need to know about this fight.
As executive orders poured in “and other requests for office approval, many of them of questionable legality, one of Newland’s supervisors began to say, ‘We’re just following orders,'” Packer wrote. “He said it without irony to remind everyone: ‘We work for the president.’ He said this to Newland once, and when she looked at him, he added, “I know that’s what the Nazis said, but we’re not Nazis.”
When Newland noted that Trump had called white supremacists “very good people,” her supervisor countered that neither then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions nor anyone in the Justice Department hierarchy had used such language. Months later, in October 2018, when a gunman spewing anti-Foreign and anti-Semitic rhetoric opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 worshipers, Newland saw herself in them and concluded that “it was the job of her office to sanction the rhetoric that inspired mass killer,” Packer wrote.
She resigned within a few days.
I take the time and space to share this anecdote because Newland’s story, so skillfully captured by Packer, underscores the choice between stopping Trump’s attacks on our institutions or allowing him to continue inflicting damage that is becoming worse by the day. more irreversible, it is the only choice that ultimately matters.
If you are a Democratic primary voter, I won’t tell you how to vote. As of this writing, your choices have been dramatically circumscribed. On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., announced that it was suspending the campaignfurther cementing an already two-person contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Voters decide on candidates for many reasons. Often it is about issues such as access to health care, the guarantee of equal justice and the promise of a good education. Or it’s elementary questions like a good job and fair pay.
Just as often, voters make decisions based on gut feelings: whether they can imagine the candidate standing on the world stage as a spokesman for American values; if he is the person who makes them feel safe and sound in times of deep crisis; as someone who fits into the pantheon of flawed but sometimes flawed men (and, sadly, after Warren’s departure, just men) who have led the nation since its founding.
Liberal super PAC launches ad attack on Trump ahead of visit to Scranton | Thursday morning coffee
If you are one of those voters – and more importantly, if you are one of those voters who voted for Trump for these very reasons, please take a moment and hear me out.
As I write this, on Thursday morning, just before noon, 11 people died across the country as a result of the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to provide misinformation on topics ranging from the severity and duration of the pandemic to when a vaccine will be widely available. He didn’t even relent in this behavior, as reported by Politico.“received real-time information from a health expert sitting nearby.”
In this time of grave public crisis, Americans deserve a leader who can communicate the facts clearly and accurately. Trump, whose lies and distortions now number in the tens of thousands, has proven completely incapable of carrying out this basic task.
On Twitteras news spread of Warren’s departure from the field in 2020, Trump again used a racial epithet to describe the Bay State lawmaker. He once again used playground nicknames to identify Sanders and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also suspended his campaign this week.
Some are ecstatic with what they see as the label-free simplicity of Trump’s remarks. But four years into his term, it is clear that his online bullying is not only normalizing such behavior in our workplaces and classrooms, but also inspiring unimaginable acts of violence.
Trump’s attacks on our values and our institutions are well documented. They are too long to fully catalog here. For every official who made it possible, there was an Erica Newland who went to great lengths to stand up for those very tender things that hold a nation together – the Republic we have if we can keep it.
This year, our very soul as a country is at stake. There is only one right choice. Do it carefully.
