Purpose and Context

​Tomorrow I meet the students in my class Developing Sustainable Environmental Responsibility (a responsibility you can sustain and which is enough to get us to sustainability).  I try to imagine how they see the world. When they were young and first understood the concepts of the United States and the Presidency, it was Obama who they saw exemplifying what this meant.  The United States was a force for reason - even if faulty, even if the things it did sometimes made little sense, it seemed like we were trying to help.  We had environmental laws.  We ;had international allies.  We honored agreements, and we honored diversity, believed in equity, and wanted everyone to feel and be included.  These young people, I tell myself, must feel as if we are all falling down a high mountain.

I feel that way but I also remember when this nation began that climb up that mountain in earnest, and how it was fueled by disgust and anger and a fierce loyalty to the truth and what’s right.  I remember when the country got up on its hind legs and barked and kept barking until even Richard Nixon had to move.  We can do it, and we can do it again.

It helps to read in the New York Times (print, Op-Ed) today that pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson has found that “few Americans live at the extremes…only 13 percent of Americans hold views that could be categorized as “strong liberal” and only 11 percent as “strong conservative”.  Years of looking at polling data has convinced her that “People in the American center are likely to be heterodox in their viewpoints.”  They take some ideas from the right and some from the left, and in her view it is “paired with a belief that as broken as things are now, there is hope things can get better in the future.” It helps me to think of people as more complicated because that makes it harder for evil leaders to divide us. It makes me think that arguments are important, as this indicates that most people are in the center, and most people are choosing what to think rather than choosing which herd to be corralled with.

That encourages me to have hopes for engaging when there is any opportunity, and attempting to use reason. I will try to frame it that way for my students, so that they can then spend their own time, as I have spent so many hours in mine, imagining things worth saying to people who really ought to hear them.

It seems that people need reminding of American history, because the ideas of the conservatives about restoring what they think we’ve lost are so often rejection of what we’ve gained.  The American Constitution gives the people of this country – all of us – a legislature to make laws that the majority wants, a court to make sure the majority doesn’t override basic rights of minorities or go against the purposes that made this government of us, and an executive to carry all that out faithfully.  Only if you are not getting good information about what is happening can you ignore that this has been reversed by the current Administration: they want everyone to follow the Executive.  History reminds us that this is what no one wanted in the early days of our republic – the Jeffersonians accused the Federalists of wanting a return to monarchy, and then the Federalists accused Jefferson of overreaching.  As Page Smith tells the story in The Constitution,

“In Jefferson’s view we were entering, with the American and French Revolutions, a new era in which human reason would triumph over ignorance and superstition, an era in which, as one of Jefferson’s favorite authors, John-Jacques Rousseau, had put it, ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God.’ Liberal political theorists, on the other hand, had yearned for centuries for ‘a government of laws, not of men.’  That was because they saw all men, however situated, as equally inclined to ‘self-aggrandizement’ – greed and exploitation.  It was only through fair and equitable laws, properly administered, that the exploitation of one class or group or interest by another could be avoided.  For men who held to such a conviction, the notion of a Supreme Court, a relatively impartial and independent power, charged with thwarting the popular will when that will was arbitrary and destructive of the legitimate rights of others, was one of the great political achievements in history. 

There was much to be said for both views.”[1]

The Federalist John Marshall at the head of the court through successive anti-Federalist administrations created a kind of balance, but Smith points out that it was not only the famous Marbury v. Madison decision in which Marshall gave Jefferson the result he wanted (reducing the possibility that Jefferson would ignore the court's order and weaken it, and at the same time affirming through reason, the power of the court).  There were other decisions that showed how the court was an essential tool for bridging the gaps between worldviews, and became accepted for this essential purpose.

[1] A Documentary and Narrative History, 1980, pp. 336 – 337.  

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On June 5th Judge Deborah L. Boardman of the Federal District Court in Maryland ordered that the shutting down of AmeriCorps be reversed, with staff hired back, and programs restored. She wrote:

If, at the end of this litigation, the government…cannot recover the funds that Congress appropriated for national service, the funds will have been spent on improving the lives of everyday Americans: veterans, people with substance use disorder, people with disabilities, children with learning differences, Indigenous communities, people impacted by natural disasters and people trying to survive below the poverty line.  Any harm the defendants might face if the agency actions are enjoined pales in comparison to the concrete harms that the states and the communities served by AmeriCorps programs have suffered and will continue to suffer.[1] 

To people who think a government focused only on commercial and technical development brings the most benefits for the people, a program like AmeriCorps can seem like a waste of taxpayer dollars, even a fraud perpetrated upon the people by bureaucrats. In reality, AmeriCorps directly benefits people and policies that put money-making first generate waste and fraud.  Focusing on people is far more in tune with the concept of legitimate government, whatever form government takes, whether democratic or monarchical.

Judge Boardman also ordered that the United States must comply with the requirement of providing notice and comment before making any significant changes in service delivery, including significant changes like the mass closure of AmeriCorps programs that occurred on April 25, 2025 and the April 15, 2025 removal of NCCC members from service. The word “comply” is in capital letters.

Not that many people know about or appreciate the meaning of the notice and comment requirement before changes in rule-making take place. It means our opinions are to be respected.  We are to be asked what we think. The government is supposed to listen to us. Such requirements can work for us only if we know about them, and when judges uphold these things, we should stand up and applaud loudly, in order to wake up others to their value.[2]

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[1] State of Maryland et al. v Corporation for National And Community Service (AmeriCorps), US District Court for the District of Maryland, Civ. No. DLB-25-1363, Order June 5, 2025.

[2] Notice and comment requirements, such as in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), recognize our right to know what our government is going to do before it does it, and the right to say something about that first.  The APA formalizes your right to sue the government if it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. For these things to work as they should more Americans have to know about them.

From Estonian World: One of the Singing Revolution concerts, on 17 June 1988, at the Tallinn Song Festival grounds. Photo by Tõnu Talivee. https://estonianworld.com/culture/estonia-how-the-singing-revolution-sparked-independence/
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A step was taken recently in the necessary task of restoring the rule of law, by the State Bar of California, which publicized on May 9th a message to all attorneys under its jurisdiction.  The Bar reminded attorneys that:[1]

Attorneys have an ethical duty to provide competent and diligent representation to clients, regardless of how unpopular or controversial their causes may be.
Attorneys must exercise independent professional judgment, free from external pressures or influences that might compromise their representation.
Attorneys must not reject, based on personal considerations, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed.
All attorneys swear an oath to uphold the United States and California Constitutions, and to faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney to the best of their knowledge and ability.
In both the federal and state legal systems, courts determine the meaning of the law, and all attorneys, including those in other branches of the government, have an obligation to comply with court orders.

In Trump 2 people are being seized on the street by unidentified officials in unmarked cars.  As an American I am in shock to see a form of secret police operating in our country and its mission is to go after certain people. ICE chopped through the car window of a legal immigrant the other day, not the man they were looking for, and finding he was not a citizen (but he had recently won asylum!) imprisoned him for a month, and he is wearing an ankle monitor as if he is a criminal.[2]  In the prison in Strafford County, NH, to which he was taken from Southeastern Massachusetts, he heard many, like him, weeping. 

[1] Statement on Recent Executive Actions Threatening the Availability of Legal Counsel and the Rule of Law - The State Bar of California - News Releases

[2] “Held by ICE: ‘I would dream that I was free’”, Esmy Jimenez, Boston Globe, Metro Section, May 18, 2025.

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Law, Purpose and Context, Policy & Events

Sometimes in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the ordinary citizen to speak up about the government that is supposed to be for the citizen, when it is not.  The founding of this country began with a list of the bad things the government was doing to the people, instead of for them.  The America of today seems to break down into two categories: those who believe the misinformation spread by the rightwing media and identify as against some kind of mythical bad liberal government that has supposedly constructed a big wasteful bureaucracy that serves just to perpetuate itself; and those who remain committed to getting good information and not choosing, but accepting, facts, and who know that our government is a set of carefully constructed tools for civilization.
Some time ago I had the recurring image, like a daytime nightmare, of America – all of us – as a woman being raped.  I shared that with my wife after I couldn’t stand to quietly experience it any longer and she wrote a letter to the NY Times expanding on that idea. They didn’t print it.  Too strong, I guess.  It was and is disturbing because it is so awful and so apt.  Since then, a letter was printed about that theme, not so shockingly put perhaps, and with good advice on standing up to abusers - discussed below.
I feel compelled to share another very disturbing image.  It is that of the chain saw, used to illustrate the cutting of waste and fraud at federal agencies, but actually doing immediate and deadly harm to people.  I can’t help but imagine the chain saw cutting into real people and – forgive me for saying this – with blood and bits of bone spewing everywhere.  Because federal agencies are made up of and are about people.
People want a quick answer to how we can respond to the assault on our democracy, to the removal of the restraints and checks.  We all need to figure out how to respond.  The images above are examples of the use of symbols to communicate an emotional response.  They are also reminders that we are in shock, and must work ourselves out of it. We need to organize, start and join initiatives, stand for principle, speak up.  One thing is to avoid fighting each other over tactics. We need many responses, and they can be knitted together.  We must have a goal not of crushing enemies but of restoring democracy, and seeking recruits to that.
One more disturbing image exemplifies what is happening to us today.  One of the places the Administration is attacking is Columbia University, where there are many useful things, such as the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund https://www.csldf.org/ and the Climate Deregulation Tracker of the University’s Sabine Center.  The https://climate.law.columbia.edu/climate-deregulation-tracker let us see all during Trump One just what they were doing, and how the courts turned so much of it back – saved us from the very worst.  The Climate Reregulation Tracker (https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/climate-reregulation-tracker) told us what Biden restored.  Now, too, to our horror but necessary edification, the Center has the Climate BackTracker (https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/climate-backtracker)[i].
Already the BackTracker has 62 items, including the announcement March 12 of the “Biggest Deregulatory Action in History” https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-launches-biggest-deregulatory-action-us-history in which the new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said:

“While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment…We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion…” (emphasis added).

[i] See also Harvard Law’s regulatory trackers and links to others, as well as a database of information formerly on federal sites: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracking-the-trackers/ and
 environmental justice and community health: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/ejtools.