One of President Donald Trump's biggest legal foes, Norm Eisen, sees a link between the giant arch that Trump wants to build and the Senate race in Mississippi — and it points to a week full of losses for the president.
Writing for The Contrarian on Saturday, Eisen said democracy won for a second week in a row. First, Scott Colom won the Mississippi U.S. Senate race, in spite of ongoing efforts to use bad data to purge voter rolls in the state.
Eisen said he was working for a Mississippi voting rights coalition to fight back against officials' efforts to make voting so difficult.
"It remains one of only three states to not offer early in-person voting and is one of 13 that require voters to provide an excuse to cast a ballot by mail. For most voters in the state, Election Day is the only opportunity to vote, and polling places close at 7 p.m. In practice, this means that many Mississippians, particularly those in Black communities, must endure long lines simply to exercise their fundamental right to vote," wrote Eisen.
This year the state partnered with Experian using outdated information to purge more than 230,000 voters from the rolls. It meant thousands of provisional ballots, which they call "affidavit" ballots, that have to be double-checked before they can be counted as they are cast. That's why it took so long to get the results in Mississippi. Now, the state has an opportunity to change all of its rules to make things significantly less complicated, Eisen said.
His second case involved the East Potomac golf course, which called a team back to court on Friday. The administration decided to close the entire island, which has parks, trails and the golf course, to the public on Nov. 15. The government claimed the problem is a dangerous, crumbling seawall and that no one will be there to manage the course. The administration canceled the contract for the people running the course. The legal group is waiting for the judge to issue an order that would stop the closure.
But the golf course isn't the only one of Trump's projects that remains in limbo. The 25-story Trump arch with the sniper's nest and cafe was paused this week. "We have since filed a motion to join the case to block the arch on behalf of nine members of the Kennedy family," Eisen said.
In it, they argue that the 25-story arch would not only obstruct historically significant sight lines and cast shadows over the gravestones of American soldiers, but there's a separation-of-powers argument. Only Congress can make decisions about the arch, not Trump.
"Yesterday we filed additional proof in the form of declarations from Kennedy family members explaining the devastation that building the arch would cause to them and to the family gravesites. The declarations are factual but also deeply emotional. You can read them here," Eisen said.
Eisen explained these events are emblematic of what happens when Americans refuse to sit idly by and accept whatever the administration decides.
