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Before the Dust Settles: A Strategy for Reclaiming the People's House
We must transform this destruction into democracy's gain: proof that citizens armed with law and persistence can check executive excess.
Oct 30, 2025
On a cold October morning, heavy equipment commenced destruction of the 123-year-old East Wing of the White House. In place of rooms where presidents rehearsed the words that would steady the nation and First Ladies wrote to grieving families, we are offered glass and spectacle, a ballroom scaled to diminish the original house, a monument to appetite where once stood service. This is not modernization. This is erasure.
The destruction matters because process matters, and process was murdered alongside memory. The 1942 shell that sheltered the nation's continuity in crisis, the offices where Rosalynn Carter pioneered the modern First Lady's role, the theater where words found their gravity before facing the nation: all of it stripped away while the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts were reduced to bystanders. What should have triggered months of review, public hearings, and preservation consultation instead became fait accompli, rubble before remedy, demolition before deliberation. When a democracy allows its procedures to be treated as suggestions, it teaches citizens that power makes its own permissions.
Robert Hutchins warned that democracy dies not from ambush but from "apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." We refuse all three. Citizens have stopped juggernauts before. Echo Park Dam died when Americans decided that national parks were inviolate, forcing Congress to abandon a project already funded and designed. Storm King Mountain survived when fishermen and debutantes united to establish that citizens have standing to defend public resources in court. The Lower Manhattan Expressway never broke ground because Jane Jacobs and her neighbors proved that affected communities must be heard before concrete pours. Keystone XL collapsed after a decade of permit fights raised costs beyond what investors would bear. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline terminated when legal challenges made risk exceed reward. Each victory followed a pattern: Meticulous documentation met sustained pressure met escalating costs met political exposure met capitulation. None relied on outrage alone. All transformed fury into filing systems.
The pattern is clear: Documentation plus pressure plus cost plus exposure equals capitulation. But pattern without purpose is merely mimicry. We study these victories not to copy their tactics but to extract their essence: how citizen movements transform government overreach into government retreat. The East Wing lies in rubble, yes, but the larger assault is on process itself, on the idea that democracy requires permission before power acts. Our response must therefore be more than obstruction. It must be construction: building a legal record, a political cost, and a civic precedent that makes this demolition democracy's gain. What follows is not a lamentation but a blueprint, drawn from democracy's past victories and aimed at preservation's future protection.
The house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue belongs to the people, not to any temporary occupant.
Our objectives cascade from immediate to transformative. First, we halt further destruction through emergency legal action while building an administrative record that compels review. Second, we force full compliance with preservation law, environmental standards, and safety regulations, making each day more expensive than planners imagined. Third, we secure either significant design modifications, meaningful mitigation, or project abandonment, depending on what facts and pressure produce. Fourth, we establish precedents that close the loopholes exploited here, ensuring no future administration can demolish first and explain later. Finally, we transform this destruction into democracy's gain: proof that citizens armed with law and persistence can check executive excess, a template for resistance that travels beyond preservation to every domain where power overreaches. These are not wishes. These are waypoints.
The coalition capable of these transformations already exists in pieces waiting for assembly. Preservation groups have standing under the National Historic Preservation Act when consultation was skipped. Environmental organizations can sue under the National Environmental Policy Act when impacts were ignored. Labor unions can file complaints when workers face exposure to asbestos and other unsafe conditions. Transparency advocates can litigate under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when records are withheld. Financial accountability groups can pressure investors and insurers as risks rise. Democracy organizations can demand hearings when process is violated. Each group brings expertise, each expertise brings leverage, and leverage compounds when coordinated.
We stand on foundations built by democracy's defenders. The American Civil Liberties Union teaches us to build records that survive judicial scrutiny. Democracy Docket shows how emergency motions can freeze bulldozers. The Brennan Center demonstrates how governance law creates obligations that cannot be waived. Public Citizen proves that regulatory enforcement can accomplish what courts cannot. We are not inventing tactics. We are applying proven methods to fresh outrage.
Implementation begins with paper because paper creates predicates for everything that follows. File FOIA requests at the White House, General Services Administration, National Capital Planning Commission, Commission of Fine Arts, and Secret Service for permits, plans, correspondence, and security assessments. Submit complaints to the District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment for dust, diesel, and runoff violations. Report safety violations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for fall protection, egress, and hazard communication failures. Demand consultation records from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the State Historic Preservation offiecer. Each filing creates a clock, each clock creates a deadline, and deadlines create leverage when authorities must respond or face their own legal exposure. Paper creates the predicate. Money creates the pressure.
Money moves when risk rises, yet the administration hides its financial trail behind claims of private funding and executive privilege. This opacity itself violates federal transparency requirements and becomes our first leverage point. The absence of public contracts, disclosed budgets, and identified funders tells its own story of irregular process. We make risk visible through investigation and exposure. Insurance underwriters for any contractors we identify need documentation of violations gathered through citizen photography, FOIA responses, and whistleblower accounts.
Where specific banks and bonds remain hidden, we target the sector: Construction lenders learn their exposure through public campaigns, surety companies receive notices about federal project requirements, and institutional investors in major construction firms face shareholder resolutions about reputational risk. The secrecy itself becomes the story. Each hidden detail uncovered through investigation gains power precisely because it was concealed. The goal is not harassment but education: ensuring every potential enabler understands that anonymity provides no immunity from liability.
While we work the paper trail and money trail, we must also work the public eye. Visibility amplifies pressure because sunshine remains democracy's best disinfectant. The administration's refusal to allow normal inspections becomes evidence itself. We create our own documentation: photographs with timestamps, videos with metadata, satellite images showing changes, expert affidavits analyzing violations, sworn statements from witnesses. The absence of official oversight makes citizen documentation more powerful, not less. Publish through multiple channels: traditional media for credibility, social media for virality, specialized press for expertise, international outlets for shame. Create narrative continuity: daily violation updates, weekly revelations about hidden funding, monthly progress toward our transparent objectives while theirs remain concealed. Name names carefully but consistently: contractors who continue work, officials who skip process, donors who write checks. Build an archive that becomes the foundation for hearings, litigation, and history. Facts without dissemination die in filing cabinets. Facts with wings become forces.
Democracy's true foundation lies not in buildings but in boundaries that even presidents cannot cross.
Political oversight emerges when documentation meets constituent pressure meets media coverage meets committee jurisdiction. Representatives need specific asks: Democrats on House Oversight should immediately schedule hearings with subpoena power, any member can request Government Accountability Office investigations, senators can place holds on related nominations until answers arrive. Committees need road maps: House Oversight for process violations, Natural Resources for preservation failures, Transportation and Infrastructure for construction oversight, Appropriations for funding questions. Witnesses need assurances of protection: whistleblower attorneys, secure communications, documentation protocols, support networks. Hearings need preparation by committee staff working with preservation organizations, investigative journalists, and citizen groups who've gathered evidence. Politics responds to persistence more than passion. Three constituents calling weekly outweigh 300 signing once.
When documentation and political pressure converge, litigation becomes the hammer. The National Historic Preservation Act requires consultation that clearly did not occur. The National Environmental Policy Act mandates impact assessment that was skipped. The Federal Records Act prohibits destruction of documents that may have disappeared. The Administrative Procedure Act forbids arbitrary and capricious action, which demolition without review exemplifies. Standing exists for preservation groups, neighbors, historians, and arguably any citizen whose heritage was stolen. Remedies range from temporary restraining orders to permanent injunctions to damages to mandamus compelling proper process. Even unsuccessful suits surface documents through discovery, create delay through procedure, and impose costs through defense. The courthouse is not the only venue, but in this era of executive overreach, it often proves the most powerful.
Timeline becomes strategy when pressure synchronizes with opportunity. Phase One establishes the record through mass FOIA filing, safety and environmental complaints, and initial contractor contacts. Phase Two analyzes responses, files initial lawsuits, escalates investor pressure, and builds media narrative. Phase Three seeks preliminary injunctions, holds initial hearings, publishes major investigations, and assesses contractor defections. Phase Four maintains indefinite pressure: enforcing victories, codifying new protections, and preparing for the next assault. Each phase documents every violation and establishes triggers for escalation or negotiation. Success might come quickly through an early injunction or slowly through accumulated costs. The plan adapts, but pressure never releases.
Victory has faces. Minimum victory: Full documentation enters the permanent record, creating evidence for future accountability and prevention. Moderate victory: Design modifications reduce harm, mitigation addresses damage, and public process governs remaining work. Maximum victory: the Project halts, redesign respects history, and those responsible face consequences. Transformative victory: New legislation closes loopholes, preservation becomes politically sacred, and citizens discover their power. Any victory beats surrender. Every victory builds toward the next. The measure is not whether we restore every stone but whether we establish that stones cannot be removed without permission.
This is how disasters become democratic gains. The house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue belongs to the people, not to any temporary occupant. Memory is the mortgage we have never missed, the deed we will never surrender. When dawn brought rubble where history stood, it also brought clarity: A republic that allows process to be optional will soon find democracy optional too. We answer not with violence or vandalism but with the tools democracy provides: transparency that embarrasses, law that constrains, costs that accumulate, and politics that punish. Each violation documented today becomes evidence tomorrow. Each dollar spent on lawyers becomes unavailable for luxuries. Each day delayed is a day democracy wins.
Frederick Douglass knew that "power concedes nothing without a demand." We make that demand through every channel democracy provides. Let those who gamble with our inheritance learn what Echo Park Dam taught, what Storm King Mountain proved, what Keystone XL demonstrated: that citizens armed with facts and law and time can stop anything, that money fears exposure more than regulation, that even presidents must eventually answer to process. The reckoning follows, patient as gravity, certain as memory. Step by careful step, document by document, hearing by hearing, until democracy's antibodies overwhelm this infection. Until those who thought they could build on rubble discover they have built on sand. Until the next demolition crew thinks twice, thinks three times, and thinks better.
John Philpot Curran understood that "the condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." That vigilance begins here, with this violation, with this response. Restore sequence. Restore sunlight. Restore the understanding that in a republic, the people's house requires the people's permission. Not for aesthetics. Not for nostalgia. For the principle that process precedes power, that memory matters more than monuments, that democracy's true foundation lies not in buildings but in boundaries that even presidents cannot cross. This is how we turn catastrophe into catalyst. This is how the resistance remembers how to resist. This is how democracy proves it deserves to survive.
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Pete Hegseth Can't Handle the Truth
Trump's secretary of war is trying to make it harder for inspectors general and reporters to investigate what's really going on at the Pentagon.
Oct 17, 2025
On September 30, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pontificated before his captive audience of 800 admirals and generals whom he had summoned from locations around the globe. The media reports of the event focused on soundbites: new physical fitness requirements, grooming standards (“no more beardos”—but don’t tell Vice President JD Vance or the president’s son), eliminating “woke” policies, and other elements of his department’s new “warfighting culture.”
Observing that the military's policy on “hazing, bullying, and harassment is overly broad,” Hegseth also said that the inspector general’s office “has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”
He dealt with that problem too.
Hegseth’s New Rules of Engagement: No. 1—Avoid Accountability
As with all IGs, the Defense Department’s inspector general operates independently to assure government accountability. The office pursues waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, mismanagement, whistleblower complaints, and more. With Hegseth in charge, its plate is full.
As Hegseth railed against the IG, it was investigating Signalgate—his massive national security breach. On March 15, he had used the Signal app to discuss with top Pentagon leaders the detailed plans for an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen. But the chat mistakenly included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Another Signal chat that day involving similarly sensitive information included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
On September 30, Hegseth published new rules for inspector general investigations, including:
- Within seven days of a complaint, an investigation must be initiated or the complaint closed;
- An investigation can “be initiated only if the complaint meets credible-evidence standard [sic]”;
- The subjects of an investigation must receive status reports every 14 days; and
- “Command directed investigations must be closed within 30 days of initiation….”
The Signalgate investigation itself is evidence that thorough investigations of complex issues cannot occur before the 30-day deadline. That will kill them.
The new timelines and reporting requirements are part of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to curtail oversight of legally questionable moves, according to Sen. Jack Reed (R-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
But there’s more.
Hegseth’s New Rule of Engagement: No. 2—Suppress Facts
On September 19, Hegseth issued a new policy that every reporter in the Pentagon had to sign: They could access the building only if they agreed to publish information that was “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
Any reporter who violated the policy would face punishment ranging from the denial of press privileges to criminal prosecution. Reporters who failed to sign the new agreement by October 14 were required to turn in their press passes.
On October 6, Hegseth revised the policy so that it didn’t appear to be such a plainly unconstitutional prior restraint on a free press. The 21-page document clarified that reporters need not submit their materials in advance of publication. But it shifted the focus from punishing journalists who publish information that Hegseth doesn’t want disseminated to: 1) undermining journalists’ ability to gather it in the first place; and 2) inhibiting Defense Department employees from providing it.
Because Pete Hegseth can’t handle accountability or criticism, transparency is his enemy.
Specifically, the policy warned that journalists who “solicit” federal employees to disclose information that has not been approved for release may lose their press credentials. And according to the revised memo, “Solicitation may include direct communications with specific (Defense) personnel or general appeals, such as public advertisements or calls for tips encouraging (Defense) employees to share non-public (Defense) information.”
The Pentagon Press Association represents more than 100 news organizations that regularly cover the Pentagon. In a powerful statement, the Association said that Hegseth and his department were trying to “stifle a free press” with the new policy that “conveys an unprecedented message of intimidation to everyone within the DOD, warning against any unapproved interactions with the press and even suggesting it’s criminal to speak without express permission—which plainly, it is not.”
As Politico reported, it was “an unprecedented move that demands media outlets hand the department vast control over what they publish… The new rules give the Pentagon wide latitude to label journalists as security threats and revoke passes for those who obtain or publish information the agency says is unfit for public release.”
Every major news organization, including the conservative outlets Newsmax and Fox News (Hegseth’s former employer), refused to sign Hegseth’s document. Only the far-right, pro-Trump One America News agreed.
Here’s Fox News’ statement:
Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues. The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the US military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.
The Lessons
Two themes emerge from this sequence of events:
First, because Pete Hegseth can’t handle accountability or criticism, transparency is his enemy; and
Second, collective action to resist Trump administration assaults on the Constitution is possible.
Never give in. Never give up.
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Journalist Sues to Secure Three Months Worth of Hegseth Signal Chat Messages
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," said the head of the group that filed the lawsuit.
Apr 25, 2025
As the Trump administration faces a metastasizing controversy over reports of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of the commercial messaging app Signal, including to discuss U.S. strikes in Yemen, the legal group National Security Counselors on Friday sued on behalf of a journalist to secure three months worth of conversations that took place on the encrypted platform.
According to The Hill, which was first report the news of the lawsuit, the complaint requests Hegseth's Signal messages and the messages from other top Trump officials.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is journalist Jeffrey Stein, the founding editor of the outlet SpyTalk. Stein sought the three months worth of chat records via Freedom of Information Act request and is now taking legal action to obtain them, according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court.
News about my Signalgate iceberg lawsuit for @spytalker.bsky.social: it's OUT!
[image or embed]
— National Security Counselors 🕵 (@nationalsecuritylaw.org) April 25, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The heads of at least five of the most powerful agencies in the national security community were freely texting over an app that was not approved for sensitive communications and setting it to automatically delete everything they said," Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, told The Hill. "Since then we've learned that we were right to be worried, thanks to the news about Hegseth's Signal chat with his wife and personal lawyer about bombing plans."
In what's now become known as "Signalgate," The Atlantic revealed last month that its editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally included in a Signal group chat with top administration officials where they discussed forthcoming U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. The Atlantic later published messages from the chat.
Members of the chat, dubbed "Houthi PC small group," included Hegseth; National Security Adviser Mike Waltz; Vice President JD Vance; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The defendants listed in the lawsuit from the National Security Counselors are the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The New York Times reported last week that Hegseth had shared information about impending U.S. strikes in Yemen in another Signal group chat included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer on March 15. The outlet cited four unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.
In response to the Times' reporting, a spokesperson for the Pentagon wrote on April 20: The the newspaper "relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the secretary and the president's agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story."
The Times responded a day later saying that it stood by the reporting, that the Pentagon had not denied the existence of the chat, and that the story did not characterize the information in the chat as classified.
In yet another twist, The Associated Press reported Thursday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, that Hegseth had an internet connection set up in his office at the Pentagon that bypassed government security protocols—also known as a "dirty" line—in order to use Signal on a personal computer.
The AP reported that the advantage of this kind of a line is that a user would be essentially "masked" and not show up as an IP address assigned to the Defense Department, but it would also leave that user vulnerable to hacking.
Speaking of the lawsuit filed by National Security Counselors, McClanahan told The Hill that "this administration has proven again and again that it is allergic to accountability and transparency."
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," he added.
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