Against Trump, Republicans Are All Talk and No Action

Against Trump, Republicans Are All Talk and No Action

Against Trump, Republicans Are All Talk and No Action

As long as Republicans fail to show the moral or political courage to hold Trump accountable, the whole party is complicit.

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The relationship between President Trump and Republicans in Congress is rapidly deteriorating. At least, that is the clear impression one gets from a spate of recent headlines, such as “Trump distances himself from GOP lawmakers to avoid blame if agenda stalls,” “Deepening GOP split, Trump attacks Republican senators” and “Trump sticks it to GOP.” The problem, as those headlines indicate, is that the feud is largely one-sided.

Almost every day, Trump demonstrates that he is utterly unfit for office. In the past few days alone, as a catastrophic hurricane devastated the fourth-largest city in the country, Trump pardoned former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio—who defied a court order to stop illegally profiling Latinos and committed grotesque abuses of power for years—and tweeted nonsense about Mexico’s paying for “the wall” on the southern border. And yet, despite the president’s intensifying attacks on members of his own party, Republican leaders still have not shown the spine necessary to confront him in any meaningful way. Even the relatively few conservative lawmakers who have spoken out forcefully against Trump, particularly in response to his abominable reaction to the white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, have failed to back up their words with concrete actions.

Ask yourself this: Who in the Republican Party is even attempting to hold him accountable?

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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