Which could be this weekend. We are in an “impeachment in a Capitol ringed by troops”, a constitutional crisis that could spiral into a state of emergency with “limited” martial law. I urge you to get behind the ideas expressed below regarding how we should react to keep Donald Trump paralyzed until he is out office and to prevent any reincarnation of him in the future.
Everything that happened leading up to January 6 was predicted it an October article entitled The War After the Election [https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-war-after-the-election-545de96aa4ca?sk=627c55d616d9296af3e398f1686493a4] in which I summarized the findings of the Transition Integrity Project, a group that included former Congressmen, United States Senators, previous cabinet members, White House Chiefs of Staffs, Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security and state governors whose “war games” predicted almost exactly what is happening. I have been updating the article to take into account events since January 6 with ideas regarding what we should do to immobilize Trump until Biden assumes power – including that we as a citizenry should refrain from giving Donald Trump any excuse for attempting to declare states of emergency or to impose even “limited” martial law. Part of this strategy involves politically paralyzing Trump by holding the swords of both an impeachment conviction and the 25th Amendment to his throat.
If “limited martial law” still sounds like hyperbole, remember that ten former Secretaries of Defense recently took the extraordinary step of co-authoring an article warning against the military becoming involved in our election process; the nation’s Capitol is ringed with National Guard troops; and the leaders of the United States government are actively considering removing the President of the United States from office with less than a week remaining in his term. It wouldn’t necessarily succeed, but the President could justify the legality of the initiation of his emergency powers more than he can justify the legality of so many other things he has done.
More long-term, in addition to the action called for in The War After the Election, I urge you to sign and advocate for The Pledge to Safeguard the Constitution [https://medium.com/@alcris2/following-is-a-summary-of-6be4d81a3ddc?sk=bf21c2a6b26ea78cf6761ede5d12a96c] which petitions Congress to pass specific, targeted but forceful legislation to limit presidential power in the most immediately vital areas and could be one of the most important things we could do to prevent anything like the events of January 6 from happening again.
