Faith, this week an extremist Supreme Court stacked by Donald Trump has ruled that the President is above the law. Six right-wing justices have given the President free rein to abuse the power of the presidency without constraint. If Donald Trump were President, could he get away with telling the Justice Department to make up dirt to put his political opponents in jail? Could President Trump get away with taking a bribe in exchange for vetoing a law? Could President Trump get away with sending an FBI hit squad to eliminate anyone he decided was a threat? If Trump doesn't get the votes on a bill he wants, can he get away with ordering the military to round up every lawmaker in Congress? And can Trump get away with doing the same to the Supreme Court while he's at it? Donald Trump has already told us how far he's prepared to go to attack our democracy and rip away our freedoms. He said directly he will be a dictator on Day One of his second administration. And his allies have a plan to replace tens of thousands of federal employees with pre-vetted loyalists at every level of government. That plan is influenced by Project 2025: a 920-page document created by the Heritage Foundation that will guide the Trump Administration on how to carry out an extremist, right-wing transformation of the government in its first 180 days. Project 2025 includes sections on reducing the independence of the Department of Justice, slashing corporate and income taxes and abolishing the Federal Reserve, eliminating terms like "abortion" or "gender equality" from our laws, rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community, and other ways to enact their conservative, anti-abortion, anti-voter, anti-climate, and anti-LGBTQ agenda. And that was all laid out before this week. So this decision from the Supreme Court just set Trump up to be even more dangerous and even less accountable. So here's what we can do about this: In the short-term, we must prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House and therefore prevent Project 2025 from being enacted. That must be our top priority. Period. And in the long-term, Congress must restore balance by adding more justices to the Court. Congress has already used its constitutional authority to expand the Supreme Court six times in the past. Court expansion isn't new. It isn't radical. It's what we must do to rein in a Court that Republicans packed and that clearly doesn't feel limited by the rule of law. Congress must also make Supreme Court Justices finally follow a basic and enforceable code of ethics and give Americans confidence that their judges are held to the highest standards and are free from conflicts of interest. I've introduced legislation to do just that. And we need to elect more Senate Democrats in November who understand the stakes of this moment and will vote to end the filibuster. It's a relic of the Jim Crow-era that is found nowhere in the Constitution and has blocked policies that are so overwhelmingly popular among voters — voters who voted for a Democratic majority — because a minority of Republican senators disagree. This will allow us to pass the policies that the majority of Americans are calling for, like federal abortion rights, voting protections, and gun safety laws. This is all within our reach, Faith. But a Trump dictatorship is within reach, too. That's what is at stake this year. These attacks on our rights, institutions, and democracy are meant to exhaust us. Meant to drain us of our will to fight. But we can't let them succeed. When we identify the problems we face as a nation, lay out solutions, and go out and fight for them, we can win. I'm throwing everything I've got into this fight. That's my plan from now through November and beyond. And I'm asking you to stay by my side, Faith. Thanks for being a part of this, Elizabeth  | 
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