Pirate's Cove

The Washington Monthly’s David Cole is actually making a fantastic argument as to why Trump should be re-elected

Can Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Survive a Second Trump Term?

Can civil rights and civil liberties withstand a second term of President Donald Trump? They have already taken a major hit. Playing to his base, Trump has unremittingly targeted the most vulnerable among us. His anti-immigrant measures began with the Muslim ban, which he recently expanded to bar immigrants from three more predominantly Muslim countries and three countries with large Muslim minorities. He has separated families, detained individuals who posed no threat to others or risk of flight, sought to deny asylum on grounds that were directly contrary to statute, and attempted to rescind protected status for the Dreamers.

On reproductive freedom, he promised to overturn Roe v. Wade, and has appointed judges with that goal in mind. He barred federally funded Title X family planning clinics from advising pregnant women about their rights to abortion, blocked undocumented teens in federal custody from accessing abortion, and gave a green light for employers to deny insurance coverage for contraception to their female employees.

He has sought to reverse nearly every advance that the LGBTQ community made under President Obama. He barred transgender individuals from serving in the military. He rescinded guidance requiring schools that receive federal funding to allow transgender students to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity. And his administration argued in the Supreme Court that a bakery had a First Amendment right to discriminate against a gay couple who sought to purchase a wedding cake, and that federal law does not bar employers from firing their workers for being gay or transgender.

Democrats have been running with the meme that Trump is an authoritarian who’s taken away liberties and such since before he even took office, and it’s interesting to finally see a list of what they think Trump’s taken. Seriously, the first thing Cole yammers about are people who aren’t even United States citizens. I wasn’t aware of Muslim terrorists having U.S. Constitutional rights. And one of those countries with “large Muslim populations”? China. There’s rather a good reason to block Chinese from entering the U.S., right? Then whining about illegal aliens, who shouldn’t be here per federal law. As for Dreamers, even Obama said his protection of them was un-Constitutional.

As for the gender confused, what about the rights of little girls to not have biological boys in their bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers? How about for women who do not want biological males with mental issues taking away their sports chances.

It is interesting that Liberals never mention that they want to take away our 2nd Amendment Rights, enshrined in the actual Constitution. That they want to limit our communications via Net Neutrality, giving Government power. The want to limit Freedom Of Speech on the Internet, they want to get rid of Fox News and radio folks like Hannity and Rush via a “fairness act”. All their ‘climate change’ policies are about taking away your freedom, liberty, and choice.

At the same time, he has appointed an unprecedented number of federal judges, most of them handpicked by the Federalist Society for their conservative ideological commitments.

Conservative meaning “follows the Constitution.”

But if Trump manages to win, then what? The next president will almost certainly have the opportunity to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices. The Court is already more conservative than it has been in nearly a century. If Trump gets to replace a liberal justice and create a 6–3 conservative-liberal split, the number of 5–4 decisions splitting in a liberal way, already relatively rare, will likely be erased altogether. We would then need not one but two “swing” justices to swing in the progressive direction for the liberal view to prevail.

That’s a hell of a reason to get out and re-elect Trump. You may not like the guy personally, but, all you Never Trumpers out there, do you want a Conservative leaning judiciary which mostly makes sure things are kept that way, or do you want a hardcore leftist Supreme Court, remaking the nation into a Modern Socialist paradise? And it’s not just the Supreme Court, but all the federal courts.

Cole goes on to whine some more, being totally non-partisan, right? Because a guy like Cole should be non-partisan, right?

But if you believe that a second Trump term would create a civil liberties dystopia, the single best thing to do is stop it from happening. In the words of the ACLU’s 2018 midterm campaign, “Vote like your rights depend on it.” (The ACLU is nonpartisan, and does not endorse or oppose candidates, but we educate voters and urge them to make their votes count.) It’s not enough to vote; you need to amplify your voice by encouraging others to vote like their rights depend on it, too. After all, Trump won in 2016 not because he earned a larger share of the vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012. His share was, in fact, smaller. The reason Trump won is that Hillary Clinton’s vote share was less than Barack Obama’s. It was low Democratic turnout that made the difference. If that changes because people vote for civil rights, Donald Trump will lose. It’s as simple as that.

Why should Cole be non-partisan?

David Cole is the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. The views expressed here are his own.

Kinda partisan, isn’t he?