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Impeachment Is Now the Best Shot We Have To Avoid Being Steamrolled by White Nationalism

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | February 24, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | February 24, 2017 |


After a few weeks in which it seemed the only thing that Donald Trump could accomplish was signing toothless executive orders that mostly acted as press releases, Trump’s evil enforcer, Jeff Sessions, was confirmed, and shit is starting to get real again. This week, Sessions (over the objections of Betsy DeVos, strangely) lifted protections for transgender students enacted by Obama; there’s word that Sessions — as we all fucking warned — will be enforcing federal laws against marijuana use (even in states where it is legalized) because it’s one more tool he has to imprison Black people; the Obamacare repeal is being discussed seriously again (despite what is now overwhelming approval for it); ICE is rounding up out-of-status immigrants and deporting them; and Stephen Bannon — Trump’s evil visionary — is bragging about choosing cabinet members designed to dismantle the federal government. Here’s something he said at CPA yesterday:

But I think we — the center core of what we believe, that we’re a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a — and a reason for being.

That right there is code for: We need to protect America’s White culture.

Congress isn’t going to be able to do much to prevent the executive branch — led by Bannon (the architect) and Sessions (the enforcer) — from following through on so many of the things that we knew they’d enact, because where it concerns immigration and guidelines — like the one protecting transgender students and the unwritten rule to look the other way where it concerns marijuana usage — much of the power resides in the executive branch.

Our best hope right now is still impeachment, and the good news there, is that there’s been yet another break in the issue most likely to sink Trump: His connections to Russia. Not only do we now know that Trump’s campaign staff had multiple continuous contacts with Russian officials, we learned yesterday that after the NYTimes story broke, Reince Priebus called upon the FBI to come out and discredit that story. James Comey refused, because the FBI doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations (unless it involves Hillary Clinton’s email server two weeks before the election) and truthfully, if they did comment, it probably wouldn’t be favorable to the President.

The bigger story here, however, is that Reince Priebus was trying to influence an FBI investigation. That’s illegal as fuck. There are rules restricting the White House from direct contact with the FBI over pending investigations. This directly violated those rules. This particular violation is basically what ultimately sunk Nixon, too. As they say, the cover-up is always worse than the crime, although in this case, the crime is really bad, too.

The White House did, itself, deny communications between the campaign and Russia, after Reince Priebus went on Fox News last Sunday and stated, “The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations.” What’s interesting about that comment is that Priebus is essentially confirming that contact between campaign staff and Russian officials is “treasonous,” so now we just need proof beyond what we know to be true from anonymous sources.

This will be up to the Congress, of course, and while Republicans are dragging their feet, the pressure is getting to them. I think, for instance, that Maine’s Susan Collins — who agreed this week that Congress may need to subpoena Trump’s taxes — is starting to turn. Collins is not someone who really stands up for what’s right; she’s a Republican who always seems to do what is most politically expedient, and the fact that she’s turning on Trump suggests to me, at least, that she’s done the calculus and realized that this is the way the wind is blowing. Currently, Collins is playing both sides, but she’ll stake out a position on our side if the winds keep blowing in that direction, and the Russian/Trump investigation isn’t going to blow away anytime soon.

Additionally, this morning dumbass Trump only seemed to confirm, once again, that Priebus did contact the FBI by attacking the leakers at the FBI instead of the substance of the leaks.

We need to keep the pressure on. We need to keep showing up to town halls or holding our own town halls without the candidates, because Congress holds all the keys right now, both in terms of investigating Trump and pushing through a repeal of Obamacare. We have to impeach this fucker, and soon, because the administration has employed a full court press on protecting the culture of straight, White men to the detriment of everyone else.