What Can Stop Him?

We have a “robust civil society,” for one

A lot of us are still in shock, we don’t know what to do about the re-election of Donald Trump. I feel that way. Obviously, it happened, and we must accept it (yes, we have to). Is there anything we as American citizens, can do to make sure he doesn’t radically alter our government? I just listened to an interview on The New Yorker’s podcast, The Political Scene, with David Cole, who served as national legal director of the ACLU from 2017 to 2024. Cole wrote an article called “What Can Stop Him?” for the New York Review of Books. It’s extremely informative and encouraging. Cole writes, “Our worst enemy is not Trump himself, but fatalism about our ability to stop him.”

He tells us that the checks and balances in our system are stong enough to prevent or slow down some of the things Trump has said he would do. Rounding up hundreds of thousands of immigrants will take a lot of legal action, not enough immigration lawyers to go around, and detaining the immigrants (if he tries) will require a lot of beds that we don’t have — and loads of money. There will be legal blocks all through his attempts to deport immigrants who are undomumented. “Trump would have to vastly expand the immigration judicial apparatus, a measure that he himself opposed during his first term. Even if he changes his mind, it would take time to put a…