ALSO SEE: Robert Reich on Substack

Friends,

Congress is on track to pass the largest and most regressive piece of legislation in American history.

Last week, I shared with you a letter to Democrats from someone purporting to be Liz Cheney (as I noted in a later version, it turned out not to be from her but most likely from Dr. Pru Lee), essentially telling Democrats to get off their asses.

Regardless of the author’s identity, the letter conveyed an urgency and boldness more responsive to the current authoritarian crisis than anything coming from today’s business-as-usual Democrats, who seem to know how to act only in a campaign season.

To build on that urgency and boldness, I’ve summarized below four of the most trenchant options in that letter (judging from your responses).

Please select the one you’d most like Democrats to begin working on immediately.

1. Mount an independent investigation. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse. Make it public. Use experts, veterans, whistleblowers, journalists, watchdog organizations. Hold public hearings. At some point, these people will be held accountable. And when that day comes, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented. You’re not just preserving truth — you’re preparing evidence for prosecution. The more they vanish people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight. Investigate every author of Project 2025, every aide who defies court orders, every communications director repeating lies, every policy writer enabling cruelty. You can’t stop a regime by asking the king to sit down. You dismantle the throne he’s standing on — one coward at a time.

2. Join the International Criminal Court. You cannot control what the other side does, but you can control your own integrity. So call their bluff. Prove that the Democratic Party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership. Join the International Criminal Court. If you’ve got nothing to hide — join. Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts. Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty, why they’re disappearing people off the streets, why they’re setting up detention facilities in an alligator-infested swamp. And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into the United States. Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international oversight.

3. Plan the recovery from this cataclysm. Work with strategists and military minds on PROJECT 2029 — a coordinated, long-term plan to rebuild this country when the smoke clears. You should be publicly laying out: the laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again, the systems you’ll tear down, the safeguards you’ll enshrine, the plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable, the urgent commitment to immediately bring home those sold into slavery in El Salvador, the electoral reforms you’ll fight for to prevent a dictatorship from ever again forming under our very noses. You say you’re the party of the people? Then show the people the plan.

4. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors. Not everyone inside this regime is loyal. Some are scared. Some want out. Build the channels for them to defect — encrypted, anonymous, and protected. Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes. Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors. Everyone makes mistakes — even glaring, critical ones. We are not the bullies, we are not the ones filled with hate. And it is not your job to shame people who finally saw the fire and chose to step out of it. They will have to deal with that internal struggle — the guilt of putting a very dangerous and callous regime in power. But they’re already outnumbered. Don’t push them back into the crowd. We don’t need purity. We need numbers. We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.