Over a thousand people mobilized last night on the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in response to the passing of SCOTUS judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. More will be mobilizing tonight. These mobilizations are not just a time to mourn one of the most progressive judges on the Supreme Court in recent history, but they also a warning to the Democratic Party and to the national movement that without action now, Trump will push through another right-wing appointee to the Supreme Court with little to no effective opposition. It is abundantly clear what the negative repercussions of yet another conservative, pro-Trump judge appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court would be for the next decades to come. Any semblance or expectation of justice from such a court for the progressive future of America would be lost. The national movement of resistance against Trump is already in the streets of Washington D.C. and must come out to the streets all over the country.

The Democratic Party must fight Trump’s appointment before the election, using all of the means and resources at their disposal, including calls to action to the streets nationwide. If the leadership of the Democratic Party makes clear TODAY that they will enlarge the Supreme Court and add seats if McConnell rushes the appointment before the inauguration. If they do this, and find the resolve of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who threatened this in 1936, and they have a chance of preventing Mitch McConnell from railroading this appointment through.

While Democrats are nostalgic about the memory of Ginsburg and hope to appeal to the morals of Trump and the Republican Party to do the right thing, Mitch McConnell promises a vote in the senate floor before the November election. The Democratic Party cannot continue to treat the danger of Trump’s authoritarianism with such childish contempt after almost 4 years of the Trump presidency; a presidency that is built on sabotaging and defending international intervention in American elections, on brutal repression of political protesters around the country and the defense of racist police violence, on inciting racist paranoia in his base and emboldening his most vicious racist fanatics, and on the separation of immigrant children from their parents and other attacks on the fundamental human rights of immigrants. This is a presidency that is falling apart. It has been barely days since the latest Trump scandal of having lied to the American people, and the world, about the danger of the deadly COVID-19 virus that has killed 200,000 people in this country alone. As the pandemic continues to run rampant, Trump continues to lie and refuses to seriously deal with the pandemic, assuring countless deaths and damage to come. Ginsburg herself understood the dangers of Trump and refused to abandon her post, trying to hold out until Trump was no longer President. For Democrats to respond to her death and to the possibility of another Trump nomination before the November elections with pious appeals to the moral conscience of Trump and the Republican Party is just plain stupid, shameless, and ineffective.

Trump has already shown he has no morals, no regard for the law, no regard for political processes or compromises. In reality, Trump has no respect for anyone or anything. The same can now be said of the Republican Party that is completely beholden to him. Trump released a short list of Supreme Court Nominees a week ago in an attempt to improve his re-election chances. There is no question he will move to appoint a judge before the election.

The Democratic Party  must learn the lessons of their repeated failures to overcome Trump and the Republican opposition. They have already failed to tilt the balance of power to the left in the Supreme Court, starting with the failure to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat in 2016, ten months before the election that brought Trump to the Presidency. They failed to put up any real fight against the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. And they failed again to stop the gross and scandalous nomination of known rapist Brett Kavanaugh, despite national uproar and the courageous actions of Dr. Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s rape victim.

To allow Trump to get away with appointing another judge would amount to the destruction of  any appearance that the Supreme Court is a just legal body. The Supreme Court would be void of any validity in the eyes of America and the world, making it impossible to even pretend to uphold the historic democratic ideals on which this nation was founded. But most disturbingly, failing to stop another Trump nominee would guarantee Trump a real boost in his chances of reelection and a solid juridical framework on which to build and defend his authoritarian regime for years to come, regardless of the outcome of the next presidential election. The national movement cannot allow the Democratic Party to pave the road for a Trump Fascist regime.

To save any semblance of American Democracy, to defend the civil rights of Americans and people around the world,  and to defend the nation’s honor before the world, Trump must go now.

BAMN calls on Donald Trump to resign from the presidency of the United States now. We call on the Democratic Party to use every means at their disposal to stop the appointment of another Trump judge to the Supreme Court.

2020.09.19