Cleanup on Aisle 47 – Installment 1

Happy Independence Day and 250th Anniversary of the United States of America!

This feels like a good time to release the first installment of Cleanup on Aisle 47, a short blog series to share ideas on how to strengthen democracy in the United States. I have been noodling on these thoughts for over a year and started getting them into organized posts over the 2025 winter holidays. They are meant to counteract Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s game plan for systematically destroying U.S. democracy and the rule of law.

During ICE’s violent siege on Minnesota and the rest of the country from December 2025 through February/March 2026, I rewrote the intro to include this description of what was happening in Minnesota:

“Unless you are living in the Twin Cities metro, you may not understand how bad it is. Along with ICE’s murder of two people in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, ICE agents are violating people’s Constitutional rights on a daily basis. They are targeting courthouses, hospitals, immigrant businesses and neighborhood, and schools, showing up at bus stops and using children as bait to kidnap their parents. They are not just detaining criminals; they are arresting immigrants who are here legally, U.S. citizens, especially those who are protesters or providing warnings to immigrants, Native Americans, and journalists. They love to use Nazi slogans and imagery. We’ve taken to calling ICE agents the ICE Gestapo. Thousands of people are afraid to leave their homes because once ICE takes you, you may immediately be sent to one of their concentration camps and/or deported. (While these camps are called “detention” camps as a way to sanitize their image, they are concentration camps, where people are being abused and dying. If you were moved at all by Anne Frank’s story, the fear this situation is causing should not be lost on you.) We Minnesotans are doing what we can — protesting, boycotting businesses that support the Trump regime and ICE goons, and providing mutual aid to our neighbors.”

My husband and I visited the street memorial to Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on February 1, 2026. It was an incredibly moving and galvanizing experience.

Because of everything that was happening in Minnesota, I didn’t get this series posted. Things were just too raw. Also, Donald Trump has weaponized the Department of Justice to use lawsuits to silence free speech and protests, which certainly made me pause about posting much of anything after Operation Metro Surge.

However, we lose our rights if we don’t use them, so I am taking courage from the many authors and protesters bearing witness to the Trump regime’s and MAGA’s attempt to destroy our government and all that is good in this country. We all need to be bolstering each other’s courage and speaking out.

Upon the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States, it’s finally time to get these ideas out into the public so they can join and amplify the ideas of others trying to save and rebuild our democracy.

The Dismantling of Democracy

Thanks to Donald Trump, his collaborators, and their lackeys, democracy and the rule of law in the United States are a mess. The Republican party has been actively working to dismantle democracy to benefit the wealthy since the Reagan era, though we have had other periods in American history where people of the same mindset (typically wealthy, white men espousing Christianity) have attempted to create an oligarchy to subjugate the masses. (See also the Civil War era and the Gilded Age.)

Under Trump, who believes and acts on the premise that no law applies to him, the dismantling of democracy has reached a fevered, violent, and unconstitutional pitch during his second term as president.

Heather Cox Richardson’s December 30, 2025 newsletter provides a brief rundown of Trump’s activities in 2025. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2025

Add to that Trump’s attack on Venezuela, which was illegal under U.S. and international law. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93n4nx5yqro

Trump and his cruel, anti-immigrant chief of staff, Stephen Miller, sent thousands of ICE agents to Minnesota in a months-long siege that included the point-blank murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, and execution-style murder of Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026. This was after ICE had been sent to other communities to kidnap immigrants and attack protesters.
Trump, Miller, and the rest of the Trump regime have set up hundreds of concentration camps in the U.S. to hold immigrants, including babies and children, in squalid conditions without due process of the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_immigrant_detention_sites_in_the_United_States

In 2025, at least 31 people died while in ICE custody. In 2026, that figure is around 21 people as of the beginning of June. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detention Trump and Miller are committing these extrajudicial killings in our names, with the explicit permission of Republicans in Congress, who approved two massive funding bills for ICE, and the 6 members of SCOTUS who approved of racist “Kavanaugh Stops” in the case Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop

The Trump regime’s criminality never ends and is getting worse as Trump’s dementia advances.

Trump’s 2026 Activities

In 2026, Trump:

— Unconstitutionally and unilaterally declared war on Iran and has threatened genocide and the destruction of civilian infrastructure if the country doesn’t do what he wants, both of which are war crimes. He’s made such a mess of negotiations that he has to concede to everything Iran wants in order to get out of the war, which still isn’t ending because Israel won’t agree to terms Trump has set for the country, nor will Trump or Iran commit to a ceasefire. His actions in Iran have directly led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, halting almost all shipping traffic and causing the price of oil to skyrocket. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/trump-iran-war-explanations-goals, https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-threats-civilization-war-crimes-758eb5cd680d7d275c4e1c38b2e01e6d

— Posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus healing a man and verbally attacked Pope Leo on his Truth Social account. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-posts-ai-image-jesus-christ/

— Attempted to start a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to pay off the January 6 insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol by settling an IRS lawsuit with himself. (It wasn’t enough that he pardoned them for their crimes.) As part of this “deal,” he has claimed that the IRS can never audit his or his family members’ taxes. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-anti-weaponization-fund, https://abcnews.com/US/doj-addendum-trump-settlement-bars-irs-auditing-family/story?id=133124367

— Hosted a UFC event on the grounds of the White House for his birthday. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-15-2026

— Continues to push for his vanity project ballroom to replace the East Wing of the White House that he illegally tore down, as well as his triumphal arch, which is meant to block the view of Arlington National Cemetery. He is quietly looting taxpayer money from the National Park Service for more vanity projects. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-27-2026

— Mucked up (literally) the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by insisting it be painted “American Flag Blue” by one of his buddies, who got a no-bid contract to repaint the pool at a cost much higher than estimated. The dark color and stagnant water of the pool caused an algae bloom, which was treated with hydrogen peroxide. Now, the paint is peeling off in massive sheets and the whole thing is a mess, which Trump is trying to blame on “vandals” because he can never take responsibility for his actions. https://apnews.com/article/trump-reflecting-pool-paint-algae-6b7b499ada2701a34bc6bc380013ad04

— Has made bank ($1.4 billion) on cryptocurrency, an industry that he is in charge of regulating, and is playing the stock market using insider information to enrich himself. https://www.citationneeded.news/trumps-crypto-disclosure/, https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-1-2026

The Loss of Checks & Balances

All three branches of government, which are meant to serve as checks and balances for each other, are operating with Republican majorities, with Congress and the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) amplifying Trump’s illegality and destruction of our democratic institutions.
Trump has stacked the executive branch with those who support his world view, a rogues’ gallery of odious people who are taking advantage of Trump’s dementia, narcissism, and hold over MAGA voters to enrich themselves with power and money. This rogues’ gallery includes Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles, Pam Bondi (unceremoniously fired by Trump on April 2, 2026), Todd Blanche, Bill Pulte, Linda McMahon, Kristi Noem (ousted in March 2026), Todd Lyons, Gregory Bovino (removed from his position at Customs & Border Patrol after the killing of Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge), Tulsi Gabbard (resigned as of June 30, 2026), Scott Bessent, Brendan Carr, Bill Barr, Howard Lutnick, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Elon Musk and the DOGE team (whose damage has been long-lasting and ongoing).

Congress contains a majority of Republicans who use the filibuster to block legislation and avoid governance. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump toady, refused to seat duly-elected Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva or call Republicans back to the House to work through the government shutdown (October 1 – November 12, 2025) so he could keep the house from voting on the release of the Epstein files. (While the vote to release the Epstein files overwhelmingly passed and Trump signed the bill, the DOJ under Pam Bondi refused to release all of the files and had heavily – and poorly – redacted those that have been released, once again showing the lawlessness of the Trump administration. Todd Blanche, the new acting Attorney General, continues to refuse to release the full Epstein files, so he can protect Trump.) Mike Johnson recently said in a speech that he runs the “protection program” for Trump and his cabinet. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-27-2026

Trump absolutely needs to be impeached and removed from office for a giant laundry list of reasons, including taking over Congress’s constitutional duties (like declaring war and setting tariffs), committing war crimes, accepting bribes, tearing down the East Wing of the White House, and writing illegal executive orders, but Republicans in Congress refuse to entertain the idea, giving up their power to the executive branch.

Further, Trump has the undying support of six members of the Supreme Court, three of whom he put on the bench (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett). These six members (the three Trump appointees, plus Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito) are willfully reinterpreting or misinterpreting the U.S. Constitution so that Trump can skirt the law and create an oligarchy. In the landmark case Trump v. United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States), they ruled that Trump has absolute immunity for any crimes he commits while in office, putting the U.S. president above the law. (If Presidents Biden or Obama had come before the court with this sort of case, there is no chance in hell these six justices would have decided the case this way.)

Trump, despite losing many, many cases in court over his lifetime, is a master at manipulating how the court works. Prior to the 2024 election, he delayed and delayed and delayed on the cases to try him for his role in the January 6 insurrection and the classified documents he stole from the U.S. government. (What happened to those documents after Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case? Trump took them back. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-celebrates-return-classified-documents-justice-finally-won-out-2038168)

In his current term, he rushes to SCOTUS with various appeals, claiming they’re an emergency. SCOTUS then takes up his cases on the shadow docket, where the six Trump members decide in his favor without any written decisions that lower courts can use in deciding future cases. Through years of work by Senator Mitch McConnell, SCOTUS has been taken over by oligarchical ideologues, who legislate from the bench rather than using the plain language of the law or precedent to guide their decisions. Rather than check Trump’s power as the executive, they have supercharged it, allowing him to get away with blatantly illegal acts.

Americans Are Rising Up to Save Democracy

In the face of this brazen takeover by anti-democratic forces, the American people are rising up to rescue U.S. democracy through continual protest. Our protests have included:

Three of the largest protests in U.S. history in 2025 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size;

A general strike and protest in Minnesota that brought between 50,000 and 75,000 protesters to downtown Minneapolis on January 23, 2026, during sub-zero winter weather;

And, the largest protest in history during No Kings 3 on March 28, 2026, with over 8 million in attendance across the country. There were 100,000-200,000 in St. Paul at the ‘flagship’ event, which featured Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Governor Tim Walz, and other dignitaries. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/no-kings-upcoming-rally-in-st-paul-list-of-speakers/ar-AA1YWc04

Along with these notable protests, groups all over the country continue to protest on a weekly basis. Those of us trying to save democracy have also been engaged in contacting our government representatives, facing ICE in the streets to protect immigrants, political organizing, mutual aid, boycotts, elections, and taking whatever actions within our individual realms that we think will preserve and strengthen democracy. We have been busy, democratic beavers.

It is only a matter of time before we drive Trump and his collaborators out of the government. When we do, we will have to clean up their mess (including that Reflecting Pool!). In the words of President Joe Biden, we need to “build back better.”

We have to put more guardrails in place to prevent any person with Trump-like qualities from becoming president in the future. This needs to include clear actions for holding such people accountable. No allowing criminals who take over our government to get off scot-free, as the Confederates did after the Civil War and Richard Nixon did by being pardoned. We also need to make improvements in how Congress operates to keep it from doing nothing in the face of a power-hungry president who ignores the rule of law. Further, we need to overhaul SCOTUS so that it doesn’t cede all power to a specific president or to corporations.

The public is really the watchdog* of all three branches of government, but when dictators rise to power, they attempt to strip the public of its power. It is up to us to take our power back, but it can be challenging to get everyone organized around specific solutions for improving democracy.

Clean Up on Aisle 47

We need ideas at the ready, so we aren’t caught unprepared and unorganized when power shifts, hence Cleanup on Aisle 47, this short blog series.

The purpose of Cleanup on Aisle 47 – or Aisle 47, for short – is to provide ideas for rebuilding and strengthening our democracy, a pluralistic democracy that allows people of all nationalities, cultures, faiths, genders, sexualities, and abilities to take part and be supported.

Enough of this “othering” baloney that wealthy, powerful people use to stay in power and hog all the country’s resources to the detriment of the majority.

The ideas presented in the Aisle 47 series are those I’ve thought of or seen mentioned by others. They aren’t necessarily the best or only solutions. They serve as a starting point for reclaiming and strengthening our democracy. They are meant to be built upon or examined for feasibility. (Some ideas might look good on the surface but may be unworkable in practice or lead to unintended negative effects.) Please feel free to add your own ideas or comment on those suggested. You may also share links to the ideas of others in the comments.**

Together, let’s rebuild a stronger democracy.

 

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*Supposedly, the media is the Fourth Estate, the watchdogs of politicians, but the really large, well-established media organizations have been so busy propping up Trump or pretending he is a normal president that they are pretty much useless in this fight. The smaller media organizations and independent journalists are doing a good job, but they need more funding. Public TV and radio has been defunded (literally had their funding clawed back by Trump and Republicans in Congress), because they were too neutral and weren’t showing enough deference to Trump and Republicans, even though a study was done that showed they gave more airtime to conservative issues.

**Please keep your comments polite. They can be spirited, but no personal attacks are allowed. Comments from obvious trolls, bots, or anti-democracy shills will not be moderated through.