Many Americans this week showed they will not succumb to the screeching siren call of authoritarianism. Hedge fund founder Ray Dalio, unlike the vast majority of the sniveling billionaires, warned that Donald Trump is endangering democracy. “What is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” he said. Dalio also predicted that the firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook “would undermine the confidence in the Fed defending the value of money, and make holding dollar-denominated debt assets less attractive, which would weaken the monetary order as we know it.”
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California issued a scholarly, blistering 52-page opinion holding that Trump, intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief” violated the posse comitatus prohibition on using troops for civilian law enforcement. And in an equally spicy opinion, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs from Boston held that Trump’s extortion of Harvard was unconstitutional.
That ruling strengthened the hand of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, invariably effective and pugnacious, in denouncing Trump’s plans to do the same in Chicago. “There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops. He is insulting the people of Chicago by calling our home a hellhole, and anyone who takes his word at face value is insulting Chicagoans, too,” Pritzker said at a Tuesday press conference. (He may have been so effective as to convince Trump to send troops to Louisiana instead.)
We should also give a shout out to the D.C. grand juries that have refused federal prosecutors’ requests for indictments in incidents stemming from the D.C. occupation. A single refusal is rare; multiple rebukes are a shocking retort to prosecutorial abuse and overreach in a process in which indictments are practically automatic. “A prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.” the saying goes. (But in D.C., not the sandwich-thrower.) We are grateful for jurors’ common sense and devotion to justice.
None of these people, however daring, candid, or essential, came near matching the courage and moral clarity displayed on Wednesday by a group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s ring of child rape. They gathered as a show of solidarity and force at the Capitol, then spoke for a one-hour press conference with Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Marjorie Tayor-Greene (R-Ga.), and Ro Khanna (D-Cal.)
No matter how Donald Trump whined that this was all a “Democratic hoax,” he could not drown out their voices. The Washington Post reported:
Some survivors [of an estimated 1,000 Epstein-Maxwell victims] spoke for the first time about their devastating ordeal and the failure to obtain a full accounting of those responsible. They expressed pain, rage, and incredulity that Trump refuses to release all files regarding the Epstein-Maxwell criminal enterprise. And the hundreds in the audience “came from as far as Maine and gathered on a grassy spot in view of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday morning to support survivors of the sex-trafficking operation run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Denouncing the cushy treatment Maxwell has received since speaking with Todd Blanche, the survivors vehemently rejected the insulting suggestion that anyone should take Maxwell’s self-serving comments seriously. “Nobody should be listening to her. She’s a perpetrator,” said one of the organizers. “I want them to listen to the survivors’ side of the story.” One woman, Teresa Helm, expressed her anger at Maxwell’s transfer to a “prison spa” and the “repulsive,” soft-ball interview she gave to deputy attorney general Blanche.
The members of Congress supporting them clarified that the first release of (redacted) material on Tuesday had been a sham, as few—if any—documents hadn’t already been made public. Khanna said only 1% of the available documents have been released.
The scores of men who participated in, witnessed, and/or enabled these horrific acts continue to escape accountability. As one survivor put it,
“The files contain the names of powerful men who have been shielded because of their fame or fortune. Congress—will you continue to protect predators or survivors? Release the files!”
Only four Republicans have so far joined in the discharge petition to release all the Epstein files, confirming that all others would rather protect the “powerful” predators (just as panicky Trump demands). As Massie summed up: “[T]he perpetrators are being protected."
We bestow words like “courage” on public figures who do nothing more than speak truthfully and support democracy, the bare minimum required of all Americans. That is not to diminish the risk of retribution they take financially, legally, and professionally in the Trump era by refusing to keep their heads down, as so many spineless politicians, business executives, law firms, and institutions have chosen to do.
However, the survivors who decided to speak publicly about a life-scarring trauma—to elevate the one issue that has rocked Trump and his MAGA cultists to their core, to condemn Trump and his stooges for continuing the cover-up, and to denounce a criminal justice system that enables the rich and powerful who exploit vulnerable children to remain anonymous—displayed an entirely different level of bravery and self-sacrifice. These undaunted survivors have demonstrated dignity and tenacity over decades. They remain heroic. The least the rest of us can do is banish from public life those who perpetuate the conspiracy of silence and enable Trump’s cover-up.
Possibly the most powerful statement came from one survivor who said, “We will make our own list. We know who these people are.” Please do this!!
You have summed up this tawdry episode in masterful fashion, Ms. Rubin!