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nauseating
to me
Peter,
I just watched Donald Trump become president.
To be honest, it made me a little sick to my stomach.
But I know that — together — we can fight back against the regressive policies Trump and his corporate cronies will try to force down our throats.
If you can, please contribute now so that we have the financial strength to take on Trump.
Thank you for whatever you can chip in!
Onward,
Robert
Update from Public Citizen
Peter,
Tomorrow, Donald Trump will be president.
It’s still hard to believe.
But we’re going to fight back!
INAUGURATION
This Saturday, January 21 — the anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court ruling — Public Citizen will sponsor a massive teach-in in Washington, D.C. We are coordinating with the Women’s March on Washington, and we have enlisted dozens of organizations as co-sponsors.
With parallel events around the country and streaming of keynote speeches to homes and meetings across the nation, the teach-in will educate, galvanize and mobilize countless Americans to prepare for the four years ahead.
Barn-blazing speakers at the teach-in will:
Identify the threat to women’s rights.
Explain the likely repression against immigrant and Muslim communities.
Expose the planned giveaways to Corporate America.
Above all, we’re going to launch a serious conversation about what it means to have a democracy in America — for there is no functioning democracy when people must sign a religious-based registry, when people fear to exercise the right to assemble because of the prospect of deportation, when millions of voters are blocked from the polls because of suppression tactics, or when billionaires and Big Business can decide who gets elected and what they do once in power.
The teach-in will facilitate people from around the country joining together in their communities to plan additional organizing campaigns and protests. And it will be part of a broader process of developing an all-out, full-fledged, nationwide popular protest movement against the Trump regime.
FIRST 100 DAYS
We know that the Republican Congress and the new president, both, plan to swing their wrecking balls immediately.
We’ll be ready.
One top priority of congressional Republicans will be to undo various end-of-term Obama initiatives — exploiting a legislative ploy held over from the Newt Gingrich era that forbids the filibuster. This could enable them to override:
A safeguard that would help prevent mechanical failures like the one that led to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Nutrition labeling standards and promotion of healthy food in public schools.
New limits on air pollution from trucks on our nation’s roadways.
Sick leave for government contractors.
A prohibition on rip-off clauses that deny consumers the right to join together in cases against Big Banks.
And much, much more.
Congressional Republicans and Trump want to claim they are just eliminating “red tape.”
We’re going to make it very clear in human terms what is at stake. We’ll be ready with victims of corporate wrongdoing to explain the consequences of rolling back these protections. And we’ll be ready to explain which corporate interests are benefiting from each rollback.
Did Trump voters really put him in office to make it impossible for victims of Wells Fargo’s fraudulent practices to sue the bank?
That’s the kind of question we’re going to make sure is asked in Congress and in the media, over and over again.
With sufficient mobilization, we hope we can block some of the rollback agenda.
Either way, we’re certain we’re going to make it politically painful, with lasting effect.
We also anticipate some important legislation to move in the first hundred days, including a so-called budget reconciliation resolution, which is expected to be the vehicle through which the Affordable Care Act is repealed, in whole or in part.
Having voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act literally dozens of times, congressional Republicans still don’t have a real plan for how they would replace it. Almost certainly, millions of Americans will lose insurance coverage that they now have.
We’re going to highlight the human cost of this cruel and ideologically driven taking away of health care coverage.
We’re also going to elevate and escalate our demand for the only real solution to the chronic health insurance problem in this country — an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All single-payer system.
For all its positive aspects, we know that the Affordable Care Act was flawed by the compromise at its inception: the decision to permit the for-profit health insurance industry to maintain its control. We know that single-payer is the only way to ensure coverage for all Americans and to rein in soaring health care costs.
It’s obviously going to take years to win single-payer, but we are indeed going to win.
Meanwhile, we anticipate a series of rapid-fire executive orders and executive actions from Trump right after he takes office.
Our expectation is that some of these actions will be unlawful.
If that expectation is borne out, we expect to be in court within days seeking rulings to block Trump’s plans.
BEYOND
After bracing through the whirlwind of the first hundred days, Washington will settle into a more normal rhythm.
We’re going to see the Trump administration try to undo important rules and programs adopted by the Obama administration, in areas from consumer protection to labor rights to clean air.
Undoing older rules will require the Trump administration to go through the formal rulemaking process. That will let us mobilize the public to defend recent gains and to submit our own evidence about why existing rules should stay in place.
In many cases, if the Trump government moves in the face of evidence of the need for consumer and other regulatory protections, we will be able to sue to stop them.
Which is exactly what we plan on doing.
On the legislative side, we expect Congress to move through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s agenda, aiming to undo as much of Dodd-Frank as possible, cutting taxes on the super-rich and corporations, limiting the rights of victims of corporate wrongdoing, slashing the budgets of regulatory agencies, making it more difficult to prosecute corporate crime, undermining worker rights and more. They may even try to cut Social Security and privatize Medicare.
We don’t plan on letting any of that happen.
With allies, we’re going to make sure that Senate Democrats filibuster and block all of these disastrous proposals.
We’re going to mobilize people across the country to protest an agenda designed to enrich the already mega-wealthy and immiserate everyone else.
We’re going to identify regular people who can articulate plainly and powerfully how these Big Business plans will have very real and terrible consequences for their families and communities.
We’re going to paint a picture with high-definition clarity of how Republican support for these proposals is direct payback to major campaign donors.
And we’re going to ask again and again and again:
Did the populist Trump supporters really vote to empower Big Banks to rip off consumers? Did those voters really want corporate criminals given a get-out-of-jail free card? Did they want to see Medicare benefits cut and control of the program handed over to private insurers? There’s no question that we’ll have a defensive orientation over the next several years. We’re going to have to fend off the most corporate and extremist agenda in memory.
But we’re also going to push for an aggressive, progressive agenda: winning single-payer health care; breaking up the Big Banks; expanding Medicare and Social Security; putting corporate criminals in jail; raising the minimum wage; curtailing Big Pharma monopolies; overturning Citizens United; and more.
Those are the policies that America needs, that America wants.
Because in spite of the election results, Americans are in fact extraordinarily united in support of very progressive policies. For example:
Three-quarters of Americans support a steep rise in the minimum wage. Four out of five voters, including three-quarters of Republicans, want to expand — not just maintain, but expand — Social Security. Across the country, three-quarters of voters want to maintain or strengthen environmental standards. 83% of Americans, including three out of four Republicans, favor empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices. And “with near unanimity,” reports The New York Times, “the public thinks the country’s campaign finance system needs significant changes.” The way to appeal to both the Trump populist voters and voters who stayed home is with a populist economic and political agenda that speaks to the real and felt needs of disempowered voters of all parties.
That’s a path forward that gives us a hopeful way out of our gloomy present circumstances, that offers us the prospect not just of stopping the horrible Trump agenda but reorienting our country to the far-reaching changes we really need.
That’s our plan.
In scale and scope, it’s as ambitious as anything we’ve ever proposed.
It’s doable, if we all pitch in.
If you can, please donate today.
Thank you.
Onward,
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen
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