When the jackboots come, what will matter more?

After a slim majority of America’s voters returned a toddler with a loaded gun to the presidency, I put myself on a strict national news diet. Now entering the second month, I limit my national news consumption to one hour per day, as needed, down from five.

The intake reduction has trimmed my emotional baggage and quieted 3 a.m. bouts of anxiety; I’m pretty sure my fine lines are also in retreat.

At first, my post-election diet resulted in a spare time bonanza bookended by Ambien and daytime gummies. But munchies are a thing, and I didn’t take a year of Ozempic shots just to get fat again, so in the second week I switched to vodka. By the third week, after I’d sucked down a handle of Titos martinis (shelter dogs, you’re welcome), no vermouth, extra large olives, I found a balance.

Because political insanity is as contagious as any life-threatening disease, I now follow Trump’s GOP-backed crazy from a time-constricted distance. It isn’t a retreat so much as a re-fortification for dangerous times ahead.

It’s ok to take a break, just don’t withdraw entirely

For the half of the nation to whom Trump is abhorrent, reduced consumption of the news makes sense, provided it is temporary: Trump’s middle finger to America, brandished with every unqualified cabinet member he recruits from Fox News, Q-anon, and lowest common-denominator reality TV, will still be standing in January.

The dangers Trump 2.0 poses are as grave as they are real, and we owe our children, our history and our veterans of foreign war the courtesy of paying attention. Trump’s revolving door of insanity is designed in part to normalize the abnormal. It’s also meant to wear us down. For that reason alone, we have to remain diligent, keep watch, and, most importantly, speak up.

But too much focus on Trump’s sinister mind-mush can be counterproductive. It’s like obsessing over biopsy results when we already know we have cancer; visualizing metastasis can trigger it.

Don’t obsess over unquantifiable dangers

The main rationale for reducing obsession with the news is that, at this point, the dangers posed by Trump’s clown-car cabinet are speculative.

Senators’ advice and consent on the cabinet is Constitutionally required; when presented with Trump’s most egregiously unqualified goons, senators will either hold or fold, and the variables influencing their decisions are still in flux. Trump has not yet been sworn in (a Trump ‘oath’ strains credulity), and it is impossible to know which way they will break. Down-the-rabbit-hole MAGA senators will salivate, all in, but Republican senators from moderate and mixed districts will be held to account by their voters and will not so easily sacrifice their careers for Trump.

Same caution applies to military leaders. Trump’s choice to head the Department of Defense was forced out of leadership roles from two military veterans organizations after repeated allegations of public drunkenness, financial mismanagement, and sexist aggression. Military leaders take an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not the president, and many of them will be clear-eyed about the dangers of following orders from a man like Pete Hegseth, whose support of pardons for rabid war crimes tacitly encourages them. The Hegseth nomination insults and endangers professional servicemen and women who have dedicated their lives to the military, and they aren’t likely to forget Hegseth’s undisciplined debauchery, lack of credentials, or white supremacist tattoos.

When considering how Trump’s Project 2025 could dismantle Social Security or the Affordable Care Act, the fearful might bear in mind that any cuts to existing federal programs will require congressional approval. There are plenty of small republican congressmen too afraid of Trump to oppose him, but many are not. We just don’t know what Trump’s shake down will look like, whom he’ll threaten or with what, and we can’t know what their countervailing political risks may be when the time comes.

The judiciary will provide the strongest defense, as Trump’s overtly dictatorial moves will trigger federal litigation. Firing federal workers based on a political litmus test, for example, would obviously violate both the 1^st A right to free political speech and the 14^th A right of due process. So would siccing the military on domestic political adversaries, so would attempting to imprison journalists/ columnists who criticize Trump, like the insane Kash Patel hopes to do as Director of the FBI.

Most these cases won’t make it to the Supreme Court, or even be appealed. Remember that Trump-appointed judges stopped him from overturning the 2020 election, and most of these judges remain on the bench.

Federalists are human too

It’s also possible that even the religious zealots on the Supreme Court, excepting Alito and Thomas, have been humbled by the public’s resoundingly negative reaction to their immunity decision. Justices Alito and Thomas, ethically compromised to a fair inference of corruption, are ideologues whose embrace of MAGA extremism is now well known. But there are only two of them, and there’s a good chance the other four federalists on the bench will see Trump for what he is: a Constitutional crisis of their own making.

Widespread media reports and confidential interviews suggest Chief Justice Roberts was deeply shaken by the public’s revulsion to his immunity ruling. Justices read the news too, and they can see now that Trump is committed to retribution, to destroying what has taken 248 years to build in service to his pathological ego. In private moments, seven justices must know that telling Trump he can get away with murder was a grave error.

In addition to outsize responsibility for what is to come, the Roberts Court will want to protect the balance among the three branches of government, if for no other reason than to protect its own power. But again, trying to prophylactically analyze the outcome of cases that don’t yet exist is a fool’s errand. It’s also wasted time.

Not for me. For now, and at least the next six weeks, I’d rather spend my day turning in, helping my neighbors, building community. If the jackboots come, those relationships will matter more than any opinion or political column.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.