How Do You Handle a Power Hungry Man?!
Friday, May 2, 2025
How Do You Handle a Power Hungry Man?!
“The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys… And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
Donald Trump in the April 28th, The Atlantic
Most Americans hear the words “constitutional crisis” and still drive to work, shop groceries (albeit an expensive trip these days), pick the kids from school and truly do not notice that much has changed. Sure, polarized political talk can get hot and heavy – you find yourself hanging out with people who share your view of the world – but daily life is, well, just that: daily life. So, is having a dominating political party attempting to impose a very limited cultural view on everybody a threat to you? For most, not really. But for me, that complacency is akin to living in a termite infested house, where the damage has not surfaced yet… but when a floor caves in and ceiling collapses, it just might be too late to matter.
One of my favorite legal writers is UC Berkeley School of Law Dean/Professor, Erwin Chemerinsky. He cares, he can write so we can all understand, and he sees what I see going on: the President of the United States has placed a vice-like grip on everyone in the executive branch and turned the entire MAGA dominated Congress into whimpering fools whose lips are chapped from kissing Mr. Trump’s derriere so often. But that pesky judicial branch of the federal triumvirate of “equal” power, well they are not falling into place so easily, even after they loosened the restraints, granting the president blanket immunity from criminal prosecution if the purported offending act can reasonably linked to some authorized presidential power. I can almost see Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that absurd opinion, giving an oversized wink to the world as he issued that ruling. Chemerinsky has obviously taken this all in. And he is deeply disturbed:
”Is the U.S. facing a constitutional crisis? The answer, unequivocally and emphatically, is yes. But it also could get much worse… In fewer than 100 days, President Trump has taken an astounding array of unconstitutional actions to consolidate power and to stifle dissent. He has asserted the ability to eliminate federal agencies created by statute and to refuse to spend federal funds allocated by federal law. He has claimed the power to fire anyone who works in the executive branch, notwithstanding federal laws limiting removal. He has attempted to override the Constitution by eliminating birthright citizenship. He has withheld money from universities without following procedures mandated by law and without legal justification. He has violated the 1st Amendment by revoking visas solely because of the views the visa holders expressed.
“These illegal acts don’t just harm the individuals on the receiving end; they harm us all. Significant layoffs in the Social Security Administration will mean many people who are eligible for benefits won’t get them, at least not in a timely manner. Cutting off funds for international aid will cause people in other countries to die from lack of medical care and food. Cuts in medical, scientific and university research will reverberate for years, with devastating consequences for basic science, innovation and finding cures for diseases.
“But of all Trump’s illegal executive orders and other actions, none is more inimical to our Constitution and the republic than its claim that it has the power to put human beings in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador with no court in the United States having the power to provide recourse. The president has clearly said this could include U.S. citizens and not just the immigrants he has subjected to extrajudicial “disappearance” so far.
To be clear, the government has no authority to put anyone, noncitizens or citizens, in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. And it has no authority to imprison anyone period, or to deport them, without due process. The federal courts must have the power to stop illegal incarceration and to ensure the return of anyone illegally imprisoned in order that due process can occur. Otherwise, we exist under a dictatorship, not a democracy under the rule of law… That is why two matters now pending in the federal courts are so important. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of our constitutional democracy may turn on these cases.
One involves the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the administration has invoked to send alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. This is blatantly illegal. The Alien Enemies Act allows the government to deport males over the age of 14 from an enemy nation when the United States is in a declared war or there is an imminent military invasion. It has been invoked just three times since it was passed in the 18th century: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. It has no application to today’s situation, and even if it did, it does not authorize incarceration in a foreign prison…
The other matter now pending in the courts involves Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a lawful resident of the United States, who a government attorney admitted to the court was apprehended by mistake and wrongfully included in the shipment of supposed gang-member immigrants to the El Salvador prison.
The federal district court in Maryland ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return to the United States. The government refused and appealed to the Supreme Court. On April 10, the justices sent the case back to the district court saying the lower court had the authority to require the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador, but they also said it was unclear whether the district court has the power to “effectuate” this.
The Trump administration has used the ambiguity in the court’s order to justify doing nothing for Abrego Garcia and nothing to remedy its own error and illegal actions.
Anyone who studies the law or high school civics understands that the Trump administration cannot be right in its treatment of Abrego Garcia or in its position that the courts can have no say in the matter. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent in the case involving the Venezuelans, the history of lawless regimes that deny due process is well known, “but this nation’s system of law is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.” Los Angeles Times, April 18th.
It’s sad, and we have no clue how this will end. Some appellate federal courts have been tiptoeing, giving the President wide berth is ways that just might destroy the nation. That must change, and the Supreme Court has moved in that direction, but they no longer have the luxury of tempering their words. Ted Cruz(R-TX), citing in a Senate Committee that “radical leftist” federal courts have issued injunctions against Trump’s recent executive orders in over three dozen instances, fails to mention that statistic represents the growing number of unconstitutional executive orders. Radical communist, leftist judges, even those appointed by Reagan and Trump himself? Sorry Ted.
For crass pragmatists, who do not care about politics, they may well want to take heed that except for the oligarchs at the top, autocracies almost never generate economic success and almost always generate a highly corrupt, favor-granting kleptocracy, that benefits very, very few. Trump and his policies have uniformly showed the majority of Americans negative response. Does Trump reverse course? Of course, he doubles down and demands the DOJ investigate the pollsters (including Fox) evidencing Trumps fall, for “election interference.” Trump now lives in a delusional castle of his own making, surrounded by his sycophant enablers. Red alert, America, red alert.
I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps the greatest mistake our Founding Fathers made was to structure our system of governance on the assumption that the elected men of good faith would put country ahead of personal gain to create a uniformly fair and prosperous nation.
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