Trump’s Legacy – Climate Change Rising as Due Process is Falling

  

Trump’s America Redefines Hell on Earth in Two Ways

Trump’s Legacy – Climate Change Rising as Due Process is Falling

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

Taking a break from the myriad of economic missteps and inconsistencies defining Trump 2.0, today I would like to focus on two “Trump-forbidden” areas of deep concern: air and basic rights.

Donald Trump is lifting restrictions on coal mining and insisting that the word “coal” always be preceded by “beautiful clean.” Unfortunately, there has never been any beautiful clean coal, although some varieties burn dirtier than others, and there are industrial scrubbers that can reduce some of those toxic emissions from coal fired power plants. For the rest of those nasty emissions, they may be pumped deep into the earth, forgotten until they reopen and seep out. Coal has been the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution. But while Trump may think he’s reopening a moribund business, there is shrinking demand for coal everywhere. More coal mines closed during Trump 1.0 than during the Obama administration.

In the meantime, global average temperatures have exceeded the 1.5 degree Celsius warning level, there are vastly more severe tropical storms (who build their strength based on warming seawater), more out-of-control wildfires, more forced migration as farmland dries up and blows away, more people dying from intolerable heat, more disease-carrying insects moving with the heat, and areas that haven’t experienced flooding for centuries are deeply underwater. The entire state of Florida, particularly the southern part, which is significantly built on porous limestone, is struggling with sinkholes, street flooding, coastal erosion and horrific hurricanes. Folks to used to visiting North Carolina’s Outer Banks are shocked at how quickly that land is disappearing.

Even as our military tracked climate change in continuous detail – often a predictor of the rise of extremists who almost always turn on the West – Trump has ordered all efforts that report climate change or are directed at its mitigation be purged from federal spending or mention in any official federal website or publication. Nobody told him: 1. Mother Nature does not care and 2. Mar-a-Lago is in the crosshairs of her wrath. If everything is going to be more expensive because of Trump’s economic shenanigans, climate change will up those costs substantially. Think: homeowners’ insurance as a small example. Think: our inability to afford mounting climate-related death and destruction

But if we are gaining climate change mega disasters, we are also losing giant gobs of constitutional due process rights as our Supreme Court seems to be bending over to accommodate a rogue president with vengeance and retribution on his mind. What surprises me, even in incidents where constitutional protection is rather clear, an “outraged” majority of the Supreme Court in increasingly relying on shadow rulings (an opinion without a formal hearing), purposely ambiguous terminology knowing that Trump seize on any uncertainty and feeding his proclivity to win via delay. We have a “unitary executive” with increased power, often sanctioned or ignored by the courts, slowly turning the executive branch in his fiefdom and the DOJ as his personal hit squad for political opponents. First Amendment? Separation of church and state? An independent Department of Justice and an autonomous federal judiciary? What are those? “Grandpa, where were you when the Constitution died?”

On April 9th, Trump issued an executive order targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures. He ordered the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. The notion of an independent judiciary was already very much in question when mega-Trump-sycophant AG Pam Bondi parroted Trumpism as if she were a ventriloquist’s puppet. But Trump’s belief that he alone controlled the right to deport non-citizens to wherever he wanted was repeated by his underqualified lawyers in every court in which his misuse of power was challenged.

With dozens of such lawsuits filed, by state AGs and aggrieved individuals, law firms and individuals, Trump’s legal team ignored facts and embarrassed themselves before judges. Still, the courts seem to grant Trump more leeway that has been accorded to any other US President. On April 7th, “The divided court agreed the Trump administration can use the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of a foreign gang, as long as the detainees are given the right to challenge the government’s claim.

“‘The critical point of this ruling is that the Supreme Court said individuals must be given due process to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act,’ Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who is leading the lawsuit, wrote in a statement. ‘That is an important victory.’…President Trump, writing on his social media platform Truth Social, focused on the other key part of the court’s ruling: ‘The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself. A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!’” Los Angeles Times, April 10th. So, who really won?

Days later, faced with an admitted federal error sending lawful alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a unanimous Supreme Court order that the federal government “facilitate” his return. Huh? As Trump argued in the press that he should have the absolute power to deport even US citizens to foreign prisons under his emergency powers, he treated the Supreme Court decisions as sustaining his powers under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Giving that power to a radical, rogue President, who has shown a complete inability to empathize, is a very effect ratification of Trump’s quest for total autocratic rule. If this dangerous practice, this excessive deference to a hate filled bully hell bent on revenge and retribution, is not stamped out… who is next? You? Your children?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as a practicing lawyer, this unwillingness to be direct and shut down every vestige of Trump’s rising autocracy… by Congress or the courts… makes me sick and ashamed of my country.