Anybody up for the mother of all class action lawsuits? That better be what congressional Democrats are asking each other this weekend. That better be a complaint many attorneys in each federal court district are revving up to write in response to what appears to be a $1.7 billion attempted theft from federal coffers by the president of the United States.

My mind has been racing toward the end of a trying year teaching high school in inner city Baltimore. And yet, it is compelled to stop for a water break to comment on yet another pounding on the principles of the Great Experiment by an assailant who is supposed to be a protector. The 250-year-old experiment is being reconfigured before our eyes, morphed into the Great Grift by a person beloved by too many for his prowess as a confidence man, for how well he has stuck it to the powers that be for decades: the Internal Revenue Service, bank loan officers, fall guy lawyers, even workers who completed jobs he hired them to do. Now, the con is on the citizenry of the United States of America, the taxpayers whose hard-earned federal tax payments may soon go to people who pleaded guilty to crimes against the government, those absolved because of their loyalty to Donald Trump.

This is not because a judge has decided to make restitution to Trump and his most violent followers for appropriate criminal prosecutions against them. It is because, in a government that seems now wholly owned by the occupant of the Oval Office, Mr. Trump is simply intending to take restitution he could never properly win in a court case that has no controversy. It’s like the senior partner in the law firm suing a client of a third-year associate. It’s a fair bet the associate advises his client to settle the conflict-of-interest case very much to his boss’s advantage.

You know where there is a controversy? Having any and every taxpaying citizen of the U.S. pay any amount of the fruits of their labors to the desecrators of their democracy. If Democrats aren’t hammering that home in every election message of the season, they should be ashamed.

We’re not likely to get the mother of all class action lawsuits. But we have some say over whether we get the mother of all turnout. That is what opponents of the administration need. With the power of ICE, the weakness of the VRA, the uselessness of Iran and the brazenness of Mr. Trump’s corruption, turnout is all that can keep the Experiment recognizable, as it struggles to survive the pounding.