Convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money case, Donald Trump could have faced severe consequences. Each of the felony counts of falsifying business records was punishable by up to four years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. Yet U.S. District Judge Juan Merchan took a remarkably light approach in sentencing Friday, issuing Trump an “unconditional discharge” — meaning no jail time, no fines, and effectively no punishment except that he retains his felony conviction.
For many in the criminal justice reform and abolitionist space, his feather-light sentence further highlights the widespread inequities and failures of a criminal legal system where hundreds of thousands of Americans remain behind bars without ever even being convicted, let alone of a felony.
Despite the nonexistent penalties (aside from limits on his ownership of firearms and a requirement that he provide a DNA sample for a New York state database), Trump continued to rail against his prosecution. He called it “a very terrible experience” that was politically motivated, echoing his previous claims that he was facing a “two-tiered justice system.”
In the same city across a thin stretch of river, Ann Mathews, managing director of the Bronx Defenders, a public defenders nonprofit serving low-income Bronx residents, agrees that this case highlights the two tiers of justice. Just not in the way Trump means.
“This never happens for our clients,” said Mathews. “We felt the outrage. And then I think, wow, imagine the people we represent.”
What is drag doing to stop it?
Drag attends biweekly rallies to protest against the genocide. These rallies have effectively changed the government’s stance on the Palestine issue and begun a shift in public and political opinion away from ties with Israel. Netanyahu says drag’s country have betrayed him and we’re all antisemites.
Drag also told Americans to vote for Harris so that things wouldn’t get worse while we direct action doers solved the problem. Unfortunately, Trump won the election, so it looks like it’s going to be very difficult to end the genocide no matter how much direct action we do, unless we put a bullet in Trump’s head. Thanks to the US’s decision to ramp up financial and military support for the genocide, we’ve had to change priorities from stopping the genocide, to just getting refugees out and a safe place to live. It sucks.
Your action to oppose the genocide was to tell people to vote for the people committing the genocide?
No, you’re forgetting the first paragraph of drag’s answer. Only part of drag’s action to oppose the genocide was to tell people to vote for the politician who was campaigning to reduce her organisation’s support for genocide. It seems like you’re having some trouble holding the entire situation in your head.
Drag will make this very simple: don’t do nothing when a genocide is happening.
Ok, but drag was encouraging people to vote for the people committing the genocide. Drag was literally doing worse than nothing.
Is that a deontological moral stance or a consequentialist one? Drag asks because it seems like a deontological moral stance, and if your deontology is that you can never choose between two bad options and need to abdicate responsibility instead, well those are garbage ethics that will cause genocide to happen.
Consequentialist. Lending false legitimacy to the lie that Kamala and the Democrats aren’t fully, one hundred percent, active and willful participants in the genocide, and spreading the false claim that the genocide is somehow “restrained” under Democrats in a way it won’t be under Trump simply serves to downplay and diminish the severity of what’s happening, and stifling any pressure against it. It’s not fighting genocide, it’s normalizing it.
So you’re saying no more people are going to die because of Trump’s presidency than would have under Kamala? You’re making a direct argument that Trump is 0% worse for Palestinians, Ukrainians, trans people, and immigrants?
If drag is going to start doing that kind of bad-faith bullshit, I don’t see any point in continuing.