Stay as Vocal as Hell
Here's What's Happening for July 2nd, 2024
I’ll make it short and sweet today:
On Monday, after an irresponsibly long delay, the court finally released its presidential immunity ruling - a 6-3 decision ruling that a president cannot be charged, and is indeed immune, for any crimes done in an official capacity as president of the United States1.
I go into more detail about the case on the podcast, but I’d like to double down on something here.
The whole idea behind Here’s What’s Happening, as a podcast, as a Substack, as all the things, is not to scare you when it comes to the news. The point is to help us all better understand what’s happening. That’s also been the goal – Not to break news, but to break news down. To help us all better understand it.
We shouldn’t be scared.
Being scared is for when there’s nothing we can do.
We should be worried.
I am, inherently, an optimist about this country. I believe our best days are ahead of us because history tells us that they are not behind us. But those best days require work.
They have always required work.
They require more work now.
And so we’re going to have to do a few things.
We’re going to look for the helpers. Look for the people doing everything within their power to right an egregious wrong, and we’re going to support them.
For example – Alexandria Ocasio Cortez announced on Twitter:
We’re going to start seeing moves like that, and we’re going to support the work. We’re going to support the efforts.
We’re going to stay as vocal as hell.
This doesn’t get to become a story from last week and next week we’re talking about something else.
Be talking about this.
The next president will likely have at least two seats to fill – Trump will make this court worse. He’s already reaping the benefits of the court he built, why wouldn’t he make it worse?
Finally, yes I’m going to tell you to vote.
Yes, we have very real problems with the system, but we only get to do that work, we only get to keep fighting with our leaders and pushing them to do better and firing them when they don’t, if we get to keep having elections.
We have to get through this one, to be able to get to another one.
We only get to continue fighting for our democracy if we all show up and vote in this election.
The stakes are real and the Supreme Court just spent the last two weeks of this term showing you exactly how real they are.
How you feel about what happened today is up to you.
What we do about it is a task that falls to all of us.
With all of that in mind, I want to read you one last little something from Justice Sotomayor:
“With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
Be a voter.
Don’t forget - this is also a podcast :)
Head to kimmoffat.com/thenews for direct links to both an audio and video version of the podcast, as well as links to everything I discussed here and in the episode.
Also, I wrote a book! It has nothing to do with news at all!
“december.” Faced with the end of a loving 22-year relationship, a young couple replays the moments that brought them to where they are now. Leaving will break her fiancé’s heart. Staying will break her own.
It’s available on Amazon, or as an ebook on Amazon or Apple Books.
Most important, don’t forget…
I’m proud of you!
