No. of Recommendations: 9
Jennifer Rubin at Substack lifts up four individuals this last week who stood up.
With all of the outrages being committed by this administration, we dare not forget those who stand up and show us what courage looks like:
Not everyone is backed by the power of collective action, however. Four individuals this week, acting without institutional or political support, firmly defied authoritarian power plays—and it is their courage that we want to underscore at the end of this inspired week.
Bill Owens, executive producer of the iconic news program 60 Minutes, left rather than consenting to compromise his journalistic integrity. Apparently, the sticking point was his refusal to go along with CBS’s ludicrous settlement of a specious claim brought by Trump.
The New York Times recapped the circumstances leading up to the anticipated settlement:
Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”
Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched.
As Oliver Darcy reported, Bill Owens told his colleagues in a hastily scheduled meeting that he had become the “corporation’s problem.” And rather than sacrifice his journalistic independence, he decided to leave. Owens refused to do the bidding of another corporate toady willing to sacrifice the independence of an esteemed media outlet. Moreover, he made clear precisely why he was going and encouraged his staff to stay. Redstone and Paramount management may be ready to capitulate (as ABC did in settling a suit against Disney, which was almost as ridiculous as the 60 Minutes case), but Owens was not about to give her cover. He reminded us that individuals always have a choice to refuse to obey authoritarian bullies and their enablers. He remained undaunted, and left his office with dignity.
When refusing to obfuscate (or flat-out lie), devoted patriots encourage others to take a principled stance. We saw that same approach in the Southern District of New York, when three more prosecutors—Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, and Derek Wikstrom—quit rather than “apologize” for refusing to carry out a corrupt “Justice” Department deal to dismiss the criminal charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
“The Department placed each of us on administrative leave ostensibly to review our, and the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office’s, handling of the Adams case,” they wrote in their joint resignation letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. In leaving, they joined a fleet of other prosecutors (including Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon) who resigned, bringing the total to at least ten.
“It is now clear that one of the preconditions you have placed on our returning to the Office is that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case,” the prosecutors wrote. “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.”This administration continues to attack the core foundations of our constitutional form of government.
But people ARE standing up, as America’s favorable opinion of Trump dives deeper into negative territory.
https://open.substack.com/pub/contrarian/p/four-un... 