The Week Ahead

May 18, 2025

Joyce Vance May 18

As we head into the coming week, a reminder: Trump is less inevitable than he tries to make it seem. Last week, he lost part of his cheering section when right wing podcasters Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer each came out against his plan to accept a (second hand) Air Force One from Qatar. Then, five Republican Congressmen voted against his budget bill in committee, blocking it from advancing. Republicans Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Chip Roy of Texas, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania told Trump “no” in an embarrassingly public way.

Sometimes, it’s important to not lose sight of the facts. The facts are that despite his election to the presidency, Donald Trump is a convicted felon. Two federal cases, each bringing serious charges that were voted forward by a grand jury, were dismissed, but only because Trump won the election. A fourth case in Georgia is on hold.

That takes us today, Sunday, May 18, which is E. Jean Carroll Day, the anniversary of the first of two verdicts Carroll obtained against Trump in defamation cases. Carroll wrote in a book that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store dressing room. Trump called her a liar, and she sued, winning verdicts against him in not one, but two cases.

On this day in 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll when it returned a verdict in the defamation case. Trump was ordered to pay $5 million in damages. Because it was a civil case, the finding of sexual abuse had only to be supported by the preponderance of the evidence, not guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard in a criminal case. The verdict was for sexual abuse, not rape. New York used an old-fashioned definition that limited rape to forcible penetration by a penis, as opposed to more modern definitions of the crime that are more expansive. In July 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan said this equated with the common definition of rape today.

Trump doesn’t always win.

At my daughter’s graduation today, in an auditorium inside of an art gallery on campus, this amazing piece of wearable art, a jacket. was on display.

This is the entire piece.

The story behind the artwork.

So, when you see stories like the one about Stephen Miller saying that suspending habeas corpus is under serious consideration, don’t accept it as a done deal. It’s a ridiculous, anti-constitutional suggestion from someone who isn’t a lawyer. His idea that the writ can be “suspended in a time of invasion” skips a couple of steps, including who is doing the invading and precisely who can no longer seek the writ—even if there was an invasion of gang members running across the border on Trump’s watch, that would hardly justify suspending habeas for the people who use it the most, prisoners in custody in federal and state prisons.

Trump’s plans success isn’t inevitable, and while taking Trump’s intent to damage if not destroy the rule of law seriously, we shouldn’t hesitate to dismiss some of the ideas his people float for what they are—ridiculous.

Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse. The coming weeks are going to be critical ones. Please leave your comments, any questions for me, or ideas for people you’d like to have join us for Substack Live, in the comments.

We’re in this together,

Joyce