It’s the most recent brazen sign that he doesn’t acknowledge limits on his authority to impose his far proper agenda.
Fears that the USA is within the midst of a constitutional disaster — or something significantly worse — intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media put up that “he who saves his nation doesn’t violate any legislation,” a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Trump’s put up on X — the platform owned by billionaire shadow government chief Elon Musk — got here as his administration continued its sweeping and destructive assault on the federal authorities and workforce, running roughshod over the law within the course of.
Trump’s put up Saturday was the most recent brazen sign that the president doesn’t acknowledge limits on his authority to impose his far-right agenda.
New York Occasions columnist Jamelle Bouie called Trump’s message “the one most un-American and anti-constitutional assertion ever uttered by an American president.”
Since taking workplace lower than a month in the past, Trump and Musk have moved aggressively to dismantle federal businesses and remove any officials who may shine mild on or hinder their efforts.
Trump, his handpicked Cupboard officers, and Musk have additionally disregarded or overtly attacked the opposite two co-equal branches of presidency, accusing judges who’ve moved to halt or restrict the brand new administration’s actions of being Democratic partisans.
In some cases, the Trump administration has actively defied rulings from federal courts, an alarming indication of what’s to come back.
Yasmin Abusaif and Douglas Keith of the Brennan Heart for Justice noted Friday that “the final time the USA noticed widespread open defiance of court docket orders by elected officers was when governors in Southern states refused to combine their colleges after the Supreme Courtroom dominated in opposition to segregation in public schooling in Brown v. Board of Training.”
“President Dwight Eisenhower — although he was no fan of the court docket’s determination — in the end dispatched troops to the South to assist implement the ruling, saying, ‘The Supreme Courtroom has spoken and I’m sworn to uphold the constitutional course of on this nation, and I’ll obey,’” Abusaif and Keith continued. “The governors’ efforts to defy court docket orders are extensively acknowledged as some of the shameful intervals in U.S. historical past.”
Frank Bowman, a legislation professor and former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for Slate final week that “with every passing day, the sensible capability of the courts to cease, and even materially hinder, the disaster diminishes.”
“If Trump efficiently defies the courts,” Bowman added, “the one remaining impediment to dictatorship might be public revulsion, nationwide common protest, and the hope that such a response would trigger Trump to retreat and, in the end, recall some fraction of the Republican Social gathering to its constitutional obligation.”
We’re not backing down within the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, impartial media organizations are confronted with pressing mandates: Inform the reality extra loudly than ever earlier than. Try this work at the same time as our normal modes of distribution (equivalent to social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Try this work at the same time as journalism and journalists face focused assaults, together with from the federal government itself. And try this work in neighborhood, by no means forgetting that we’re not shouting right into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to actual folks amid a life-threatening political local weather.
Our process is formidable, and it requires us to floor ourselves in our rules, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying variety of company information organizations – both by way of want or greed – rush to implement new methods to additional monetize their content material, and others acquiesce to Trump’s needs, now’s a time for motion media-makers to double down on community-first fashions.
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