Rising This Week: Remembrance
In Mississippi, a Memorial Day weekend of anti-Trump protests ends with a candlelight march for the dead. Courts grapple this week with tariffs, immigration, and Harvard.
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When covering Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, one aspect of those hearings that I found most striking was how the witnesses routinely began their sworn testimony by describing the tyranny their families escaped and the ideals that brought them to the United States.
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s father fled the Soviets, and her mother grew up stateless in Nazi Germany after her family escaped the Bolshevik Revolution.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s family fled the Soviet Union when he was three and a half years old, a history that helped inspire him to serve as a U.S. military officer and a diplomat for more than two decades.
Dr. Fiona Hill, formerly a top Russia advisor for Trump, proudly called herself an “American by choice” and described her upbringing as a daughter of English coal miners. Her paternal grandfather survived being shot, shelled and gassed in World War I, and other members of her family “fought to defend the free world from fascism alongside American soldiers, sailors, and airmen” during World War II, she testified.
By inserting those personal histories into the congressional record, the witnesses sent a clear message: The United States represents freedom, opportunity and opposition to oppression to millions around the world.
The witnesses testified, sometimes by implication and other times directly, that Donald Trump put the country’s legacy at risk by leaving Ukraine, its key ally in the defense of democracy, vulnerable for his own personal and political advantage to manufacture a smear campaign against Joe Biden and his family.
As someone whose family history is filled with relatives murdered in campaigns of Soviet and Nazi terror — and others who were lucky enough to escape — those testimonies from Trump’s first impeachment are some of my clearest memories from those proceedings. Those details didn’t get much media coverage at the time, but they cast the stakes of those proceedings into sharp relief.
They crystallize what we’re urged to reflect upon every Memorial Day: Those who sacrifice for our freedom.
Some veterans have decided to approach the national holiday this year in that spirit with protests from Boston to Mississippi. We’ll highlight those events later, but first, I want to reflect on where All Rise News stands this week.
This past Wednesday, I activated our first feature for paid subscribers: our first-ever All Rise News chat room. The lively conversation lasted for more than an hour with more than 100 posts filled with people interested in the future of this newsletter.
The conversation continued even after the chat ended. One subscriber reached out to discuss the possibility of using the legal system to redress a historic wrong in her state. Another contacted me to discuss using local government to oppose actions in her community that she found harmful, and another shared ideas for involving the artistic community in our editorial mission.
As a journalist, I’ve been fortunate enough to see the impact of my work, but usually, after that happens, you move onto the next story.
What makes creating this news organization on Substack even more gratifying is the sense that we’re creating a community, only a little more than a month into our project.
As I had hoped, our subscribers are treating our newsgathering as actionable information in their lives.
In the Courts
The New York Times estimates that judges have issued at least 177 rulings to date that at least temporarily paused some aspect of the Trump agenda.
Here are some of the cases that might tick up that number and other cases worth your attention.
President and Fellows of Harvard College v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al (Tues., May 27): Harvard’s lawsuit challenging the Trump’s attempt to stop the university from enrolling international students, a bid recently blocked by the judge.
How to attend: U.S. District Court, 1 Courthouse Way, Boston, Mass. (Courtroom 17)
Listen virtually: Register for public access here.
When: 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time
California v. Trump (Tues., May 27): The Trump admin tries to transfer California’s lawsuit challenging his tariffs to the Court of International Trade.
How to attend: U.S. District Court on 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, Calif., Courtroom 8.
Remote access, if available, can be found here.
When: 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time
Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association v. Trump (Weds., May 28): A federal judge in Brooklyn hears oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian immigrants as unlawful.
How to attend: U.S. District Court for EDNY, in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Courtroom 10A South)
When: 1:30 p.m. ET
Chung v. Trump (Thurs., May 29): Yunseo Chung, a green card holder and pro-Palestine activist at Columbia University, has a hearing in her case over the Trump administration targeting her.
How to attend: U.S. District Court for SDNY, 500 Pearl Street, New York N.Y. (Courtroom 21A)
When: 12 p.m. Eastern Time
President and Fellows of Harvard College v. DHS (Thurs., May 29): Harvard urges a federal judge to extend her order blocking Trump’s attempt to stop the university from enrolling international students.
How to attend: U.S. District Court, 1 Courthouse Way, Boston, Mass. (Courtroom 17) — For now, “in-person only.”
When: 10:30 a.m. ET
In the Streets
The 50501 movement, one of the major organizers behind the Hands Off protests, organized protests from Boston to Mississippi opposing authoritarianism on or before Memorial Day.
To look for — or promote — other demonstrations in your area, check out The Big List of Protests.
Candlelight March (Sun., May 25): Capping off a series of Mississippi-based protests intended to “challenge the reckless actions of the current administration,” this march commemorates the “brave who died for our liberty.”
When and where: Hattiesburg Centennial Monument
Memorial Day Rally for a Dream (Mon. May 26): Hosting veterans and others as speakers, the group Mass 50501 marches from City Hall Plaza to the Liberty Mall in Boston, Mass., in support of “statewide protections for immigrants and the Constitutional rule of law.”
When and where: Full information here.
On the Phones
As part of our ongoing coverage of civic engagement, All Rise News exclusively looks at the 5 Calls app’s internal data, which they shared with us for the seven days leading up to May 23.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” still dominates pushback, just like last week.
Callers’ top concern remains the deep cuts to Medicaid (65,005 calls).
From there, the top issues for callers are opposing the GOP’s attempts to stop federal courts from being able to enforce contempt of court sanctions (17,627 calls); a $1 trillion Pentagon budget and “Musk handout” (17,600 calls); and other “harmful provisions” in the megabill (16,933 calls).
Constituents are not likely to relent after the bill’s narrow passage in the House, as the legislation heads to the Senate.
The “Musk handout” refers to reports that the SpaceX CEO is the frontrunner to revive the Ronald Reagan-era “Golden Dome” missile defense system, described by Foreign Policy magazine as a Star Wars-era folly. Musk has denied jockeying for the boondoggle.
The last of the top five topics is ending the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza (10,110 calls), an issue remembered by callers even amid legislation promising “The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History.”
Great information. Thank you.
Thank you!!