The man who saved 740 children

 

             

When 740 children would have died at sea, and every country said "no," one man—who had reason to remain silent—said "yes."         

The year was 1942. The ship drifted in the Arabian Sea, like a floating coffin. There were 740 Polish children on board. Orphans. Survivors of Soviet labor camps, where their parents had died of the flu or starvation. They had escaped through Iran, but a more terrible punishment awaited them.

No one would accept them. The British Empire—the most powerful power of its time—refused entry to port after port along the Indian coast. "It's not our responsibility. Sail away." Almost finished with food. No medicine. Time was running out. Twelve-year-old Maria held her six-year-old brother's hand. She had promised her dying mother to protect him. But how do you protect someone when the whole world turns on them?

And then news came to the small palace in Gujarat. The ruler was Jam Sahib Digvijay Singhji, Maharaja of Navanagar. In the royal system, he was just a minor prince. The British controlled the ports, trade, and army. He had every reason to obey and remain silent.

When his advisors told him that 740 children were stranded at sea after the British refused to take them to any port in India, he asked one question: "How many children are there?"

"Seven hundred and forty, Your Majesty."

He paused and calmly said: "The British may control my ports. But they do not control my conscience. These children are docked at Navanagarh."

The advisors warned him: "If you challenge the British—"
"So, I will stop. " He sent a message to the ship: You are welcome here.

When British officials protested, the emperor remained firm. "If the strong refuse to save the children," he said. I, the weak, will do what you cannot.

In August 1942, the ship struggled to enter Navanagara harbor under the blazing summer sun.
The children walked like ghosts—exhausted, blank-eyed, many too weak to walk. They had learned to hope for good. Hope had turned dangerous.

The Maharaja was waiting for them on the dock. Dressed simply in white, he knelt down to be at their eye level. Through interpreters, he spoke words they had not heard since their parents died.

"You are no longer orphans. You are my children now. I am your Bapu—your father."
Maria felt her brother's handshake. After months of rejection, these words seemed surreal.
But he was serious. He didn't build a refugee camp. He built a home.

In Balachadi, he created something amazing—a little Poland in India. Polish teachers who understand trauma. Polish food flavored with memory. Polish songs in an Indian garden. A Christmas tree under a tropical sky.

“Suffering tries to erase you,” he said. “But your language, culture, and traditions are sacred. Let's keep them here.”

Children who were told they had no place in the world finally found a home. They laughed again. They played again. They returned to school. Maria watched her brother chase a peacock in the palace garden, and her body remembered again what safety meant.

The emperor used to visit them often. He remembered names. He celebrated birthdays. He watched high school plays. He comforted children crying for parents who would never return. He paid for doctors, teachers, clothing, and food—from his own wealth.

For four years, while the world was torn by war, 740 children lived not as refugees, but as a family. When the war ended and it was time to leave, many wept. Balachadi became the only home they had ever truly known. These children have grown and moved around the world—becoming doctors, teachers, engineers, parents, grandparents. And they have never forgotten.

Warsaw's Good Emperor Square appeared in Poland. Schools bear his name. He was awarded Poland's highest honor.

But the original monument wasn't made of stone. It cost 740 lives. Today, at 80 years old, they still gather. They tell their grandchildren about an Indian king who refused to turn compassion into political calculation.

In 1942, when kingdoms closed their doors, one man—without obligation and with every reason to remain silent—looked at the suffering and said: "They are my children now." And so the world changed—silently, forever, and irrevocably.

Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja (September 18, 1895 - February 3, 1966)

Schumer, Jeffries Refuse to Join Democrats’ Growing Calls to Slash ICE Spending

 

The killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis this week came as Republicans in Congress were planning to bring a homeland security spending bill to the House floor, deciding on whether the agency that’s surged thousands of armed agents into communities across the country should have increased funding—and progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the department’s ability to wreak further havoc.

“I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN Thursday. “I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to bring violence to our cities.”

But the top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) both appeared to have little interest in discussing how their party can use the appropriations process as leverage to rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that have taken part in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.

Both Schumer and Jeffries sharply criticized Wednesday’s shooting and the Trump administration’s insistence that, contrary to mounting video evidence, the ICE agent who shot Good was acting in self-defense. But Jeffries said Thursday that he was focused on passing other appropriations bills that were ultimately approved by the House. “We’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time,” Jeffries told reporters.

With Congress facing a January 30 deadline for approving government spending packages—and with public disapproval of ICE at an all-time high—several lawmakers have said this week that right now is the “appropriate time” to rein in the agency in any way the Democrats can. “Statements and letters are not enough, and the appropriations process and the [continuing resolution] expiring January 31 is our opportunity,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told Axios.

Schumer also refused to say whether the Democrats would use the appropriations process as leverage to cut funding to ICE, whose budget is set to balloon to $170 billion following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. Republicans will need Democratic support to pass a spending bill in the Senate, where 60 votes are required.

The Senate leader said only that he has “lots of problems with ICE” when asked whether he would support abolishing the agency—a proposal whose support has gone by 20 percentage points among voters in just one year, according to a recent survey. Both leaders also would not commit to slashing the homeland security budget should the Democrats win back majorities in Congress this year.

“It’s hard to be an opposition party when you refuse to oppose the blatantly illegal and immoral things being done by the opposition,” said Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health.

Sharing a clip of Jeffries’ remarks to reporters about the agency’s funding, historian Moshik Temkin said that “people need to understand that at its core ICE is a bipartisan project, increasingly funded and normalized over multiple Democratic administrations and congressional majorities, and a few of them (not this guy) are starting to realize how foolish, weak, and misguided they were.”

Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among the progressive lawmakers calling on the Democrats to demand reduced funding for ICE—even if it means another government shutdown months after the longest one in US history late last year, which began when the Democrats refused to join the GOP in passing a spending bill that would have allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire. Ultimately, some Senate Democrats caved, and the subsidies lapsed.

“We can’t just keep authorizing money for these illegal killers,” Jayapal told Axios. “That’s what they are, this rogue force.” Ocasio-Cortez told the Independent that Democrats should “absolutely” push to cut funding.

“This Congress, this Republican Congress, while they cut a trillion dollars to Americans’ healthcare, and they exploded the ICE budget to $170 billion making it one of the largest paramilitary forces in the United States with zero accountability as they shoot US citizens in the head—absolutely,” she said.

On the podcast The Majority Report, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder called on progressive Democrats to demand Schumer’s ouster in light of his refusal to take action to rein in ICE as its violence in American communities escalates.

“Change the news cycle and show that you’ll be an opposition party,” said Vigeland. “Call for his ouster.” Seder added that Schumer “has the ability to wage a fight to prevent the funding of DHS. He has the ability to do that, and he doesn’t want it. He’s running away from any leverage he has, deliberately.”

-Julia Conley, Common Dreams

"Abolish ICE"

Eight years ago, I wrote an article for Slate arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was an out-of-control agency that had become a “sinister” and “draconian” force “harassing and detaining people who pose no threat to the United States or its citizens.” 

The American people, I contended, needed “an honest discussion about whether ICE can be effectively reformed or if it must be abolished and replaced by an agency that can carry out its mission in a more effective and humane way.”

Now, however, we are past the point of conversation. In the hands of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, ICE is virtual secret police. Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. 

To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed “enemies” of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force.

The result is an agency whose agents’ first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence. According to The Trace, a newsroom dedicated to reporting on gun violence, immigration agents have opened fire in 16 separate incidents since last June: “At least three people have been shot observing or documenting immigration raids, and five people have been shot while driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action.”

This week, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old resident of Minneapolis. She was sitting in her S.U.V. when agents ran up and demanded she exit the vehicle, pulling on the door in an effort to compel compliance. Soon after, three shots rang out. An analysis of video footage by The Times strongly suggests that Good had been moving away from the agent in question when he fired, killing her and causing the vehicle to crash nearby.

Since then, the Trump administration has been engaged in a relentless effort to tar Good as a dangerous militant who was using her S.U.V. to attack ICE agents, an act of “domestic terrorism,” according to the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. “This was an attack on law and order, this was an attack on the American people,” said Vice President JD Vance. Good can be seen in a different video telling her eventual killer, “I’m not mad at you dude.”

Immigration enforcement seems to have ramped up its efforts even further in the wake of Good’s death. On Thursday, during an operation in Portland, Ore., Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people. The administration, as it did with Good, immediately accused the victims of being dangerous threats to the nation.

It is true that the country needs some form of immigration enforcement. But it doesn’t need ICE. It doesn’t need an agency whose institutional identity is wedded to wanton cruelty and the apparent hair-trigger use of lethal force. It doesn’t need an agency that has been transformed into a paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule. It doesn’t need roving bands of masked thugs shooting and killing ordinary people under the cover of law.

During the first Trump administration, left-wing activists demanded that the nation abolish ICE. They were right then, and they are right now.

-Jamelle Bouie, NY Times

Kick ICE Out of Our Communities

Ezra Levin is the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, a grassroots organization made up of thousands of group leaders and more than a million members taking regular, iterative, and increasingly complex actions to resist the GOPs agenda, elect local champions, and fight for progressive policies.

The following transcript has been edited for formatting.

Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I’m delighted to have back our dear friend, Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, who was getting outraged with me even before we got started. Welcome, Ezra, great to see you.

Ezra Levin
Happy New Year, Jen, I always love getting angry with you.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. We have had a cold-blooded murder in Minnesota. We’ve had the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Homeland Security not only lie to our faces, but defame a mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered for doing nothing but trying to remove her vehicle as directed by the ICE agents. What is the reaction in the community? What do you think can be done about this, and what do you think the appropriate response is?
Ezra Levin
Look, the reaction has been horror, and the reaction has been outrage, and I think that’s the appropriate reaction. We’ve been talking with Indivisible groups on the ground, since this occurred, and… look, they’re devastated. Their community is being terrorized by a secret police force led by a would-be fascist ruler, and that’s not editorializing, that’s just what’s happening on the ground, and now a woman with a young child is dead, and the regime is actively shielding the perpetrator from any kind of accountability. It’s horrifying.

The only piece of good news in response that I can say is that while this regime is trying to make everybody feel scared and alone, that’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota, and that’s not what we’re seeing around the country. We just held this launch call last night. It was Indivisible hosting, but it’s not just Indivisible as us and 50501, and ACLU and, Move On, a lot of organizations and a lot of folks on the ground, coming together to talk about what do we actually do in response. Because what we hear from the Republicans right now, they said it explicitly, one member of Congress said, stop protesting, stop getting out there. No, we’re not going to do that. We are not going to do that!

When a regime like this comes for us. attacks our communities, murders Americans, and asks us to not protest. You know what we do? We protest, because it is our job, as Americans, to express our outrage peacefully, but powerfully in this moment. And not just to be on the right side of history, not just to remember Renee Goode, but it’s our job to express outrage because it is our elected official’s job to act. And they are only going to act if they see that we are outraged and demanding action. I’ve seen a lot of elected officials out there expressing the right emotions, which I appreciate. What we want to get them to do is beyond emotion. We want to get them to act.

The way you get elected officials to do their job is by doing your job, and as an American resident of any community in this country, your job over the next 48 hours is to show up, and the good news is since we launched the ICE Out for Good weekend of action yesterday night, there are hundreds of vigils and protests and events scheduled for this weekend, and more every single hour being registered. People are coming out in force. I think this could be an inflection point against ICE.

Jen Rubin
And where do people go if they want to find one near themselves?

Ezra Levin
You can find it at Indivisible.org, just click the link and get there, or to your favorite partner, whether that’s Move On or 5051 or others. Look, I love Indivisible, I’m biased towards Indivisible, I just want you out there. I want you organized in whichever community you’re organizing with, and if you go to that map, and you say, there’s not one in my neighborhood, what a bummer, put it on the map, get your friends together and say, no, we’re going to stand up against ICE in our community. We’re going to join together and tell this fascist force that we’re not going to just lay down or constitutional rights, we’re standing up for them. Protest is not the only thing we can do. Showing up is not going to magically fix everything, but again, if we, as Americans, don’t do our job to protect our rights, to stand up against this force that is terrorizing us. It’s over. That’s the tool we have at our disposal. And if we do that, the politicians will follow. They won’t lead on their own, but they will follow us.

Jen Rubin
And I want to be clear, it’s not only to put pressure on the bad guys, on the administration, on ICE, it is to put pressure on Democrats federally, in Congress. And in Minnesota, at the state and local level, that this must be investigated. This is not going to be pushed under the rug. The state has its own capacity. The sheriff has her own capacity. This does not get shoved under the rug because Donald Trump doesn’t want us to know the truth. And I think people should be clear about this, that the state can do something, the sheriff can do something, they can investigate in parallel to the feds.

Ezra Levin
You are a thousand percent right, Jen. One of the most frustrating things over the last year is hearing from some Democratic elected officials, and this is the local, state, and federal level, what do you want me to do? We’re in the minority; we have no power! ...Do not accept that. Do not accept that. I’m under no illusion that protest is suddenly going to lead Donald Trump or any one of his Republican goons to listen to their better angels if they even have them. That’s not going to happen. The elected officials that could listen to you are the Democrats who do indeed have power, and I’ll give you a specific example, Jen. The funding for ICE runs out at the end of this month!

Democrats are going to be asked to vote to give ICE more money in weeks. And so, a question is: Are Democrats in the Senate and the House going to vote for Trump’s warmongering? Are they going to vote to give more money to a secret police force? Or are they going to use the leverage they have? And I’ll tell you what they’ll say. Some of them, not all of them. You got great ones. Maxwell Frost, and AOC, and Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie, and Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy. There are fighters out there that are on the right side of this, but some of them will say, well, if we try to fight back. The Republicans in the Senate, they’re just going to eliminate the filibuster; they’re just going to steamroll us, they’re just going to pull other shenanigans, so we shouldn’t fight on this. I’m sorry. Make them do it. Make that happen.

Use the leverage that you’ve got... make a big political deal about it and stomp them in the midterms, because you know who doesn’t like ICE terrorizing their community? Democrats don’t like it, Independents don’t like it, and normal, everyday Republicans don’t like it. This should be a massive political issue for Trump if he refuses to scale back, but the way you make it a political issue is force them to defend it if they don’t backtrack.

Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and the biggest example of this just happened in the House. Remember we were told. We shouldn’t have a shutdown, we shouldn’t make this an issue, we’re in the minority, they have all the votes. Well, thank goodness for Hakeem Jeffries and the House members who stuck it out, made it the top issue and drove Trump’s numbers into the ground, kept it in the public eye, even after those senators caved, and lo and behold, 17 Republicans crossed the aisle yesterday to vote for this. What more proof do we need that this works? You force them to do things they don’t want. That’s what politics is about. What was your reaction yesterday when you saw 17 of these cowards who, a few months ago, were unwilling to extend the ACA, suddenly crawling after the Democrats in order to save their skins? Were you relieved? Were you disgusted? This is how we have to make it so, because this is what it takes to get these people to move.

Ezra Levin
I think it’s about all of the above, Jen, honestly. This was the entire theory of the shutdown fight. We knew that Republicans did not want to face their constituents for catastrophic increases in healthcare costs. We knew that many frontline Republicans themselves in the House wanted to extend the ACA tax credits. We knew that the public wanted Congress to do that, which is why we knew this was strong firm ground to fight on, and that’s why the Senate Democrats were winning the fight right up until Chuck Schumer and the rest of them decided to throw in the towel. So, I think what is frustrating is I don’t want to be right. I want to win. And so, it is cold comfort to me to be validated by the events that come after the Senate Democrats surrender. I want ACA tax credits extended. I want ICE rolled back. I don’t want to just be proven to have had the right strategic argument.

It is deeply frustrating to me when what everybody on the streets on No Kings 2 was saying "fight back, hold your ground," when those millions of people are proven right, but you’ve got a handful of Democratic senators who are just cowards, who are feckless leaders, who are unwilling to rise to the moment. And what this leads me to is, I’m sorry, Jen, we’ve been trying to convince these people for over a year, with three of the five largest protests in American history, that the people demand action, demand leadership, and Day after day, week after week, month after month now, they refuse to embrace anything other than status quo politics. 

It leads me back to the primaries. I’m sorry. The time for trying to convince these feckless leaders to actually stand at the moment is over. The time to replace them is here, and I’ll give you an example. We’ve got the first of the Senate caucuses, the competitive Senate caucuses or primaries, happy in mere weeks. It’s in Minnesota, of all places. You’ve got Angie Craig, who wants to be the next Democratic senator for Minnesota. You know what Angie Craig did last year? She voted for Lakin Riley to empower ICE, the first bill that landed on Donald Trump’s desk to empower ICE. Angie Craig voted for it. You know what else she did last year? She was part of a crew of Democrats who voted for a resolution thanking ICE for their service to America. You know what she’s doing this year? She’s accepting money from Chuck Schumer in order to run for Democrat in the Senate. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is not the kind of leadership that we need in this moment, unless she has some kind of very visible, come-to-Jesus moment about the current state that we’re in that’s beyond just empty promises to fight back, we need different leaders. We need different leaders, and the time to demand them is in the primaries, and that’s coming up all over the country.

Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and I want to reiterate what you have said a million times, which is fight like hell in the primaries, and then whoever the Democrat is, of course, get behind them in November. Let me go to, perhaps the next battle that is coming up, or it’s not even the next battle, it’s the continuation of this battle. The Senate now is going to vote, most likely next week on the ACA, or some variation of it. What is possible, and what do you want folks to do in order to force the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate to follow what the House did?

Ezra Levin
Look, I think that the Democrats should be fighting for this because it is wildly popular and good for the country. That’s it, is good politics? And it is good for people. What is the three-dimensional or seven-dimensional chess thinking that would lead them to not do it? Unfortunately, I’ll get pretty cynical with you, Jen. It’s clear to me, some Democrats would prefer this to be a campaign issue in the midterms than to actually solve the problem and do some good. That is the reality of it. I think that’s inexcusable. They would say, well, this is smart politics. We hang the Republicans out to dry by blaming them for failing to do anything about healthcare prices. And I say, make it an issue right now. Fight right now. Because you are living on a different planet if you think that you can hold this and bottle it right up until the midterms.

You’ve got to fight the fight when the fight is available to you, and it’s available to you now. And I think we should be pushing all of our Senate Democrats to fight that thing. I’m willing to back any. If Chuck Schumer announces tomorrow this is where he’s showing the line, I’m behind him. I’ve been plenty critical of him. I do not believe in just choosing the folks who we need to get out and never coming back to the table. If they announce a plan to actually unify this opposition party and fight meaningfully, I’m there with them, but I am done accepting excuses. If they refuse to fight, we should hold them accountable.

Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, we have seen, again, like, we need any more examples, that putting pressure, making Republicans do what they don’t want to do, is possible. We had by a 52 to 47 vote margin, something you never see, which is Republicans voting for a war powers resolution against a sitting Republican president. In this case, because he launched a unilateral, unconstitutional war for oil against Venezuela, and has announced potential other targets. So beyond this, we’re going to need resolutions, I suppose, for Denmark and every other country on the planet. But Republicans move because they saw the reaction, and because Democrats, like Representative Himes, like Representative Smith, have been pounding away at this issue, even before the double tap. boat strike. They have been pounding away. What do you think we now need to do as this potentially now moves to the House, perhaps it’ll take a discharge position, to get the same result in the House?

Ezra Levin
So, you named it, but I just want to underline, Jen, this is about Venezuela, but it’s about much more than Venezuela. Think about how Trump operates. He’s a bully, and he’s a bully who’s always testing the limits. He’s always trying to figure out, where am I going to get pushback? Oh, I didn’t get pushback there. Let’s double down. Let’s do more. So this is about Venezuela, it’s about Denmark and Greenland, it’s about Cuba, it’s about Mexico, it’s about all of the imperialism that this president would like to engage in, it’s about.

Do not push back now. He takes that as a sign, and I’ll tell you why we know that. There was very little pushback against him bombing and murdering Venezuelans in boats off the coast. The thing we heard was, this is a distraction, and people don’t care about that, and why do we need to focus on that? Let’s talk about healthcare prices, or let’s talk about inflation, that’s what people really care about. And look, I’m not saying that cost of living isn’t an important issue, but you’ve got to engage in the issue of the day, and you’ve got to push back when he is testing his limits. So, what I want to see is people in elected bodies fight. I want them to see this is, this is the fight. This is where they need to actually push back, and it’s not just good politics.

Look, I don’t think the Democrats who are refusing to push back are in favor of regime change in Venezuela. Most of them are not. I don’t think they would like to see a war with Denmark. I don’t think they want to see the destruction of NATO. I think they have a model in their head of politics that is just simply outdated. They think that this guy is dangerous, and the best way to confront him is to focus on what the polls say people care most about, which, if you look at it, it’s always going to be healthcare, it’s always going to be jobs, it’s always going to be the economy. So, whenever a different issue comes up, they view that as a problem to be ignored so they can focus on the real winning issue. And I’m here to say that’s old politics that doesn’t work anymore against this authoritarian. You engage him on the ground in front of us right now. You have to fight back here. I think I understand the well-meaning political analysis that leads them in a different direction, and I think it’s for a different era.

Jen Rubin
Absolutely. What we’ve seen is one victory leads to other victories. We won on the Epstein files. They’re screwing around with that, so we’re going to have to come back. We won on healthcare. We’re going to have to fight that same battle in the Senate. We won on the War Powers Act. It is not a coincidence that once you start wheedling away and peeling off Republicans on one issue, they come back on other issues. This is how you build momentum, folks. And so, it’s not a distraction, it’s a step, it’s an opportunity. Every one of these is an opportunity, not a distraction. And I think it’s critical for our folks to kind of see that in the big picture. Let me take a step back and look at the entire landscape. 

We have what we all feared was coming, and that is a domestic guard, a tyrannical bunch of street thugs who have been unleashed, who are killing Americans, American citizens. Frankly, it shouldn’t matter that it’s a white woman, it shouldn’t matter that it’s a citizen, everybody who’s harmed is a human being, but let’s just put it right there. I think it’s critical for folks, and maybe we can begin to do this on the events coming up, that everybody understand they’re coming for you. It doesn’t matter what color you are. It doesn’t matter whether you’re illegal, or you’re undocumented, or whether you’re a native-born or a naturalized citizen. They’re coming for you. So, I would hope, and I think we’re beginning to see this, that people say, oh, hell. I could be shot in my car. A relative could be shot in the car. Oh, this is about me. How do we get that message over, and is this an opportunity to just do that one basic thing?

Ezra Levin
Look, I do think it’s an opportunity. It’s a real tragic event, and I’ve been reading a lot about Renee Goode, and… Look, I have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, Jen, and the picture that I think will haunt me for quite some time is the picture of the car with the airbag out and blood covering the airbag, and in the glove box, what do you see? You see stuffed animals. You see stuffed animals. This is a mom… This is a suburban mom in Minnesota who was doing nothing illegal at all and was driving through a neighborhood peacefully, trying to support her community that was being threatened by masked, armed vigilantes who were terrorizing that community. It’s really scary stuff; I’m not going to lie. It is scary stuff, and it’s right if you’re looking at this to think, oh my gosh, it’s dangerous out there, I’m just going to stay at home. I understand that impulse. 

What I would highly encourage folks to do in this moment is not be alone. to reach out to their community. The good news is, your community is organizing right now. These, Ice Out for Good events, we’ve got literally hundreds in the span of 12 hours are already registered. There are more every single hour coming on the map. Check it out. Reach out to your friends and family members. If there’s not one nearby, put it together. 

This is a time to be in community, because while they are trying to portray themselves. as regime, as all power, as inevitable, as unstoppable. Their power is fragile. Their power is fragile. They do not have all the cards. They are a small, extreme minority. There are far more of us. This is not ideological. This isn’t there are far more Democrats, this is far more people on the left. There are far more people who believe in the Constitution, and believe in our First Amendment rights, and believe that our community should not be terrorized by a secret police force, then there are fascists who believe otherwise. The only thing standing between us retaking power and making our community safe is the organizing that we got to do, and that comes down to you watching this. If you are watching this and you are not yet connected to your community, find your indivisible group, or your 50-51 group, or your local group of friends. There are going to be folks who feel the same way as you. Find them. Organize and push back, because that’s how we’re going to win.

Jen Rubin
Absolutely. I couldn’t say it any better than that, Ezra. It is refreshing to hear that, those of us who have been thinking along the same lines are not alone, that we’re not on Planet Z, that we’re right here, rooted in reality. So, thank you. We’re going to look forward; we’re going to be participating in those events, over the next day or so, and we cannot thank you enough for everything that Indivisible is doing. It is the heart and soul of democracy. This is what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, and you folks are making it so. So, thank you so much. Best of luck. Stay safe out there, and stay angry, folks. Anger is good, righteous anger is good. So, we’ll look forward to speaking with you soon. Thanks so much, Ezra.

Ezra Levin
Thank you, Jen.

The Contrarian

"Democrats should introduce articles of impeachment now, run on them this November, and then actually do it"

 

Democrats should be loudly calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump now, run on it in November, and then, when they take the House, actually do it. Because what he’s doing right now is not “norm-breaking,” or “provocative rhetoric,” or even the oft-quoted “Trump being Trump.” It’s an open assertion of unchecked power, limited — in his own words — only by his own “personal morality.”

Yesterday’s shocking interview in The New York Times was decisive; that isn’t how a president speaks in a constitutional republic. Instead, it’s a classic example of how a strongman, a wannabe Mussolini or Putin, speaks as he tries to reinvent the nation so the law becomes optional when it comes to him, his flunkies, and his billionaire buddies.

When asked if there were any limits on his power, he told the Times’ reporters, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He added, “I don’t need international law.”

And he’s acting it out in real time, creating his own private, unaccountable, masked army (or death squad) that’s actively terrorizing American citizens and being used to punish the cities and states of any politicians who dare stand up to him or call him out.

Not to mention his petty revenges: this week, he cut off billions in childcare and other low-income funding to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York in direct violation of the law and the Constitution because those states’ leaders had the temerity to defy him.

The Founders saw this coming. They obsessed over it and relentlessly warned us future generations about it. And they built a solution for it into the Constitution they drafted in the summer and fall of 1787: impeachment.

James Madison, in Federalist 47, cautioned that the greatest danger to liberty wouldn’t come from a foreign invasion, but, instead, from a president who turned the powers of government into instruments of personal will:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Alexander Hamilton, no radical by any stretch, wrote that impeachable offenses are those which “proceed from the misconduct of public men” and injure society itself. He hoped, in Federalist 68, that no man with “[t]alents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” would ever reach the White House, but that’s exactly what we’re now watching in real time.

And, no, impeachment is not some “unprecedented Democratic overreach.” Republicans have demanded impeachment of Democratic presidents for nearly a century, and tried multiple times, most recently just two years ago.

— Republican legislators screamed about impeaching Franklin D. Roosevelt over his threat to pack the Supreme Court if they didn’t stop knocking down his New Deal programs.
— They floated impeachment of Harry Truman for going into Korea without a formal declaration of war.
— They threatened both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson with impeachment over the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and the War in Vietnam.
— They introduced impeachment resolutions against Jimmy Carter over the Panama Canal treaty.
— They campaigned openly to impeach Barack Obama over his “dictatorial” executive orders and the “communist” Affordable Care Act.

The idea that impeachment is too “divisive” to even discuss now is a naked lie, and a very convenient one for authoritarian Republicans. What’s different today isn’t the tool of impeachment; it’s the target.

Trump has now made explicit what Nixon tried to pull off but failed: that his presidency exists above the law and he can freely ignore both domestic and international law. 

Nixon at least had the decency to mutter it privately, once even telling David Frost that, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.​” Trump has put it into public policy.

When a president claims the law doesn’t restrain him, as Trump has done — when he treats Congress’ approval as if it were optional, federal judges as if they were political enemies, treaties as inconveniences that can be gotten around or even ignored, and war powers as personal prerogatives — impeachment stops being political theater and becomes a constitutional necessity.

While I vehemently disagree with Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires, gutting USAID and other agencies, and inflammatory rhetoric (among dozens of other things), this is not about policy disagreements.

It’s explicitly about his unilaterally making war without congressional authorization, weaponizing the Justice Department against his political enemies, dangling pardons and financial opportunities for his allies but the law as vengeance for his critics, and the obscenity of his mass pardons for the criminals who attacked our Capitol on January 6th.

It’s about, in other words, a president who has told us all, bluntly, that legality and government power — including the power to execute a woman who was just driving home after dropping off her child at school — flows from his own definition of “morality,” his “own mind,” and no other source, the American Constitution be damned.

He’s asserting the “morality” of a man convicted of fraud, adjudicated a rapist, repeatedly accused of sexual assault, who gleefully takes bribes of gold, Trump hotels, and jet planes and rewards the bribers with tariff reductions, American weapons, and other benefits.

This is how Putin and Orbán transformed Russia and Hungary from democracies into strongman single-party autocracies, and Trump is eagerly following their examples (and apparently taking their regular advice).

Here’s an example of what articles of impeachment could read like, a version that could be read into the Congressional Record tomorrow:

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Articles of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump, President of the United States

Article I — Abuse of Power and Usurpation of Congressional War Authority

In his conduct as President of the United States, Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of his office by initiating and directing acts of war without authorization from Congress, in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

President Trump ordered and executed military actions against the sovereign nation of Venezuela, including strikes within its capital and the seizure of its head of state, without a declaration of war or statutory authorization from Congress. In doing so, he substituted his personal judgment and the desires of his donors in the fossil fuel industry for the constitutional role of the legislative branch, nullifying Congress’s exclusive authority to decide when the nation enters hostilities.

Such conduct is not a policy disagreement but a direct assault on the separation of powers. The Framers vested the war-making power in Congress precisely to prevent unilateral, impulsive, or self-interested uses of military force by a single individual.

Wherefore, President Trump has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-government and has committed an abuse of power warranting impeachment and removal from office.

Article II — Contempt for the Rule of Law and Constitutional Limits on Executive Power

Donald J. Trump has asserted that his authority as President is constrained only by his “own morality,” explicitly rejecting the binding force of domestic law, treaty obligations, and international legal norms ratified by the United States.

By publicly declaring that neither Congress, the courts, nor the law meaningfully constrain his actions, President Trump has advanced a theory of executive power fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution. Treaties ratified by the Senate are, under Article VI, the supreme Law of the Land.

A President who claims legality flows from personal judgment rather than law announces an intent to govern as a sovereign, not as a constitutional officer.

This conduct constitutes a profound breach of the President’s oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

Article III — Corrupt Use of the Justice System for Political Retaliation

Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the presidency by directing or encouraging the use of federal law enforcement and prosecutorial authority to target political opponents for retaliation and intimidation.

The President has publicly demanded investigations and prosecutions of political adversaries while signaling protection for allies. Such conduct weaponizes the justice system and undermines equal justice under law.

This pattern of conduct constitutes an abuse of power and a violation of the public trust.

Article IV — Subversion of Democratic Institutions and Checks and Balances

Donald J. Trump has engaged in a sustained campaign to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the authority of Congress, and the legitimacy of constitutional constraints on executive power.

By encouraging attacks on judges, disregarding statutory limits imposed by Congress, and treating oversight as illegitimate, the President has sought to weaken the institutions designed to restrain executive excess.

Such conduct represents a betrayal of constitutional responsibility.

Article V — Abuse of the Pardon Power to Undermine Accountability for an Attack on the Constitution

Donald J. Trump has abused the pardon power by issuing broad clemency to individuals who participated in or supported the January 6, 2001 attack on the United States Capitol.

While the pardon power is substantial, it was never intended to erase accountability for a violent assault on Congress itself. This use of the pardon power undermines deterrence, encourages future political violence, and weakens constitutional governance.

Conclusion

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has demonstrated that he will place personal authority above constitutional duty, power above law, and loyalty to himself above loyalty to the Republic.

Wherefore, Donald J. Trump warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

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Then comes the part Democrats keep flinching from: begin a loud and public campaign for impeachment. After all, just this week he told Republicans that his biggest fear if the GOP loses control of the House is that he’ll be impeached for a third time.

Yesterday afternoon, I got one of Trump’s daily fundraising emails. This one didn’t ask if I’d yet made a donation to get my name on the list for my “tariff rebate check” like others this week and last but, instead, said (and the bold type is also bold in his email):

“Dems plan for 2026 is simple but disturbing to EVERY MAGA Republican:
1. Flip the House
2. Flip the Senate
3. IMPEACH PRESIDENT TRUMP
4. Kill the MAGA agenda permanently”

He’s not just talking about impeachment; he’s fundraising on it! Democrats, frankly, should do the same.

I realize that a conviction will never pass the current Senate (although we may be surprised if he keeps doing and saying truly crazy and offensive things), but it’s important to get this into the public dialogue and prepare the ground for next year.

That’s why Democrats must tell voters now exactly what they intend to do with power if they win it this coming November (or before, if the GOP loses any more House members).

And they need to stop pretending that through some weird magic our democracy can be preserved by silence, caution, or simply hoping that this convicted felon will suddenly discover restraint or cave to a judge’s demand.

There is a real possibility, by the way, that today a handful of Republicans in the House could decide that preserving Congress’ war powers, the power and independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law matters more than protecting one aging politician. After all, yesterday five Republicans in the Senate voted against Trump on his Venezuela oil-stealing campaign and nine in the House voted against him on healthcare. It happened with Nixon, and it can happen again.

But it won’t happen if Democrats continue to treat impeachment like a dirty word instead of a constitutional obligation.

Yes, it’ll piss off Trump’s base and rightwing media will go nuts. But his base is already filled with rage and rightwing media will do what they do no matter what, impeachment or not. Democrats need to stop cowering. So, let’s say what needs to be said without euphemism or apology:

Democrats should introduce articles of impeachment now, run on them this November, and then actually do it.

-Thom Hartmann