Stirling Newberry pointed this out, and I agree.
Some of Trump’s Executive Order are clearly illegal, unconstitutional, or both. Trump can’t get rid of Birthright Citizenship and his order goes clearly against the written text of the amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This isn’t open to interpretation. There is no wiggle room.
Trump’s freezing of grants is likewise straight up unconstitutional. Congress decides who gets how much money for what purpose. The President executes Congress’s orders. If Trump can decide who gets how much money for what purpose when Congress has not given him that permission, then there aren’t three branches, but two.
Stirling has a longer article making the case with reference to other executive orders, and it’s worth reading, but these two are clear cut. There is no wiggle room, though many people are trying to find some.
The play here is simple: what Trump’s doing is unconstitutional and illegal, but the Supremes are controlled by the Republican party, so they are expected to ignore the plain text of the constitution and the 14th amendment and find some torturous justification for Trump’s actions.
This is another step along the line to the Imperial Presidency.
You should also be very unhappy about the domestic use of troops for domestic law enforcement. That crosses a bright red line for obvious reasons. Likewise Trump is stepping all over State’s rights.
(Stirling also has a series of articles on the future of the Center Left. They’re worth reading. Remember that he has aphasia, and pay attention to the argument and the ideas, ignoring any awkwardness. Go to the article linked, click on the first article and work thru.)
Trump is also fundamentally changing the role of America in the world order. Rather than being the central hub of treaty network, the imperial core with vassals and subjects who are, mostly, treated well as long as they stay in their place and gave the US their resources, which the US paid for by printing currency. Trump has now decided to end that era, and to fully commit to cannibalizing America’s allies. Odds of NATO’s survival are bad, and it’s a dead letter when Trump can threaten war against Denmark, one of its members. Everyone sees this, but people are so aghast and taken back most aren’t calling it out yet.
There is also a changeover of oligarchic elites. Previously the financial elites ran government. The tech elites are now moving and taking over much of that role. They have different priorities than the old financial elites and instead of being neo-liberals, they are utopian technocratic neo-fascists. They are convinced that they are superior people, even more so than the old elites and that everyone should do as they say. Everyone else to them, is stupid and unfit for power. Government, to them, must be rid of what little remains of its regulatory powers so they can do what they want, unconstrained by legal burdens. “You can just do things” is prescriptive: there have been some limits, and they want as many of those limits removed as possible.
This is a constitutional crisis. If Trump succeeds, there’s a very different country afterwards, run in a very different way by very different people, creating a very different international order.
TimmyB
I strongly doubt that the Supreme Court will allow Trump to circumvent the Constitution and/or federal law via executive orders. That simply isn’t going to happen.
The Supreme Court isn’t going to turn the U.S. into a dictatorship where the president cannot be constrained by either the Constitution or federal law. They certainly aren’t going to do it so Trump can be the first dictator.
I get that many of Trump’s executive orders violate the Constitution and U.S. laws. However, what Trump is doing is so fundamentally illegal I don’t believe the Supreme Court will bother to review the lower court decisions finding such orders illegal. It will just let them stand.
Ian Welsh
Quick update on the Database errors: finally managed to get it escalated, we’ll see what happens. It’ll be an issue for at least a day or two more.
Nate Wilcox
Pretty optimistic there, @Timmy B.
What I’ve seen in Texas is the GOP courts go along with whatever bullshit the GOP electeds pull. The only difference is the US Supremes are appointed for life so can’t be intimidated by threats to defeat them at re-election time.
However the US Supremes have proven extremely susceptible to bribery so I’d say that’s where Musk & co will get them.
Right now I’d wager Trump has a 4-5 minority in favor of whatever the fuck he tries to do. ACB is the wild card. Bet that she’s the last woman he nominates.
Also stacking the court is not something I’d put past Trump.
different clue
@TimmyB,
This isn’t your grandfather’s Supreme Court.
I didn’t want a very different constitutional-governmental order. At the very least, I wanted a 4 year breathing-space delay before it set in so that I could get sorta-ready, kinda. That’s why I voted for Harris.
Oh well. Survival is the new “victory”. Surviving is the new “winning”.
Feral Finster
Lasw is meaningless. Enforcement is the only thing that matters.
Anyway, much of the objectio to Trump 1.0 was that he said the quiet parts out loud. A the Umited States drops any pretense of being anything other than an empire, it doesn’t matter whether Trump 2.0 blurts out the truth or not, as there no longer is a need to keep up the pious frauds and polite pretenses.
Feral Finster
*sigh* I should have added that Trump’s actions have a “fire, ready aim!” quality about them.
His base will think they’re getting results. Actual implementation will get swallowed up in a million lawsuits, until Musk and Trump break up or Trump gets distracted by a Twitter beef or some other shiny object.
Basically, Trump 1.0 all over again. The man hasn’t learned jack squat.
responseTwo
“threaten war against Denmark” – if this happens that means all the NATO countries are supposed to pool their militates together and defend Denmark from Trump’s invasion. Quite a quagmire.
Revelo
Trump and the tech bros will soon cross some powerful people and get their chains yanked. The key thing to remember is that Trump is old plus he can only serve one more term as President unless he gets the Constitution amended, which requires overwhelming support in Congress and states, but Democrats easily have enough to block an amendment. So powerful old money interests will be thinking “what happens after Trump?” They are not going to let a few tech bros grab control of everything for eternity. Instead, they’ll stall for time until Democrats get enough power to gridlock the system. There will this be no imperial presidency, just a continued decline into rentier-dominated financial capitalism aka neo-feudalism.
Also, tech bros might get their chain yanked by Chinese competition without need for USA old money to intervene. Musk is particularly vulnerable because most of his wealth is in Tesla, which cannot compete against Chinese EVs. Meta companies are all enshittified to the point where only idiots still use their apps, so only a matter of time before stock value collapses like MySpace or Geocities. All tech companies are vulnerable to disruption. Nvidia selloff was just the first disruption of many to come.
different clue
. . . ” Meta companies are all enshittified to the point where only idiots still use their apps, so only a matter of time before stock value collapses like MySpace or Geocities. ” . . .
. . . also legacy hostages still use their apps, also. Millions and millions of hostages.
I’m glad I put some of my money into books. And also cans of canned fish in cans.
bruce wilder
i am sorry, but that phrase would be a superhighway for a competent lawyer
open to interpretation? You betcha.
bruce wilder
withholding funds that have been appropriated?
telling federal employees they can collect a salary and not report to work because of delayed resignation?
clearly unconstitutional. meaning that the right-wing Court is being gifted opportunities to radically change the Constitutional order
TimmyB
I strongly believe the Supreme Court will never allow a President to become a dictator. Some things are beyond party politics
Moreover, the Supreme Court, same as most semi-.aware Americans, KNOWS that the office of US President alternates regularly between Democrats and Republicans.
The Supreme Court’s GOP majority is NEVER going to give the inevitable next Democratic president the power to nullify the Constitution and U.S. laws,
even if they were willing to make Trump a dictator.
.
Some Guy
Good comment Revelo, I am inclined to generally agree, but don’t underplay the potential role of chance and chaos as things continue to unravel.
Roger the cabin boy
Trump doesn’t have to get everything he’s looking for to be a revolutionary president. The Supremes are going to give him some of what he’s asking for.
Purple Library Guy
There are a few people in this thread who, much like a lot of people around the world, are underestimating Trump because he’s a moron. But the thing is, successful fascists often aren’t very bright–or have learned to kind of function as if they weren’t. And lots of them were mocked before they gained power, and dismissed even as they started to tighten their grip. People underestimate stupid fascists A LOT.
So here’s Trump–nobody thought he could win the first time. He did. I personally thought that once he had lost power, he wouldn’t be able to make the comeback to even run again. He did. Lots of people thought he couldn’t win a second time. He did. Lots of people thought he wouldn’t REALLY start doing all those Project 2025 things or all the stuff he’d been ranting about . . . that he was too much of a blowhard and too disorganized. He’s doing them all, and then some. Now people are thinking he can’t possibly ram them through against opposition which frankly doesn’t strike me as all that strong. Isn’t it about time we all stopped underestimating him just because he’s an irrational moron? I am not going to bet against Trump’s ability to crush any courts that oppose him.
In reality, the irrationality is one of the things that makes fascism dangerous–intelligent, rational people can be persuaded not to do dangerous counterproductive things because there will be lots of lousy consequences. Successful fascists do them anyway. They don’t care. The ruthlessness is ENABLED by the stupidity and irrationalism. And ruthlessness plus power can very often defeat opposition by people who are much smarter. Smart only takes you so far when the other guy has the guns.
In a weird way I have some sympathy for that position–technocrats can ALWAYS come up with a dozen very impressive “Yes, Prime Minister” arguments for why any disruption to the status quo is quite impossible. So when the status quo sucks, a big part of the attraction of stupid fascists is that they project this aura of “I don’t give a damn what they say, I’ll do something big anyway”. The problem is that since fascists are evil, and even those of their ideas that are not strictly evil tend to be badly mistaken, the big things they do are horrible.
KT Chong
Trump is throwing a tantrum because China became the honey badger last week.
PM
These actions are dumb but also meant to be challenged so they can push the envelope. Even if Trump ultimately gets only 25 percent of what these orders are going for, he sees it as a win. And he will be right. This is how he did it before.
All of this fits comfortably in the Limits to Growth projections. Nations turning on each other and themselves in a frenzy of cannibalization to squire out just a little more time is to be expected and will continue. Trump is an uniquely ridiculous face of it, but there are many others willing to play that game, some with big telegenic smiles and all the credentials you could ever wish for.
Buckle up.
Roger the cabin boy
I agree with Bruce Wilder about the phrasing subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
I never agreed that Trump was a moron. He’s a top professional. People don’t become the best at their job unless they’re at least reasonably intelligent. He is a very able con man. The Trump coin business alone proves that.
Mark Level
I really appreciate Revelo’s comment, and coincidentally, I watched Col. McGregor on Judge Nap yesterday, he stated clearly & succinctly viz Greenland that the US MIC has had 100% control of what all their Arctic/Northern “allies” (lol) do for many years, specifically listing Sweden, Denmark, Canada, etc., controlling what they extract and monetize. Plus the US has had a very large military base in Greenland since WW II and also has full financial access to their resources, he (& others) have added.
Trump was just blustering and playing the “Big Man” based on his massive, well-known insecurities, just as he did with Russia, who holds the superior hand at the table, resulting in the Russians just ignoring the US for the time being and taking more territory. Even Budanov, one of the “brains” behind the Coke fiend/Comedia/ unelected President-for-Life Zelensky has openly admitted that barring a major miracle, Ukraine will face a military collapse by this summer (if not prior). I think it was Sergei Shoigu of the Russian top Military Staff who stated directly in March 2022 that the war would be completed by 2025. (I tried to search this, had to wade through dozens of “Ukraine is defeating the puny, incompetent Russians” Western media posts, gave up rather than persisting.)
responseTwo makes a good point, but it will never come to that, for the reasons above.
Viz the central “Constitutional” issues, c’mon, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights are both dead letters, and have been for decades, going back at least to the days of the Nixon administration, after which they enshrined Nixon’s “If the President does it, it’s legal” (a paraphrase, but quite close I’m sure).
Like the proverbial broken clock, PLG is also correct about the return of Trump. Most interesting to me is his observation that “People underestimate stupid fascists A LOT.” Quite correct, fascists rely on power and Action, not on thinking or nuance– but only as long as their cadres of worshipers are satisfied and keep the faith. It is too bad that PLG is unaware of how his hero, Trudeau the Lesser, hoisted himself on his own petard when he illegally (with no trial by jury or judicial process whatsoever) seized assets of the truckers protesting some years back, which PLG virulently supported on this site even after legal judgment against Justin were sustained in Canada.
Finster’s point about Trump’s battle skills are 100% correct as well. SCotUS is at this point extremely removed from reality and will give Trump some of the powers he demands and deny others; you might as well flip a coin as to which way that will go, except for those clearly favoring their constituencies (extremist Catholics, Federalist “drown the government in a bathtub” Fossils, Republicans making sure the non-whites don’t get to vote via gerrymandering, etc.) will be protected.
It will be a shit-show, all the way down. To repeat myself (& echo Finster) the Trump 47 vibe so far is straight from “Duck Soup.” Marx’s “History occurs the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” certainly applies in Spades. Great entertainer that the Donald is, he could do no more nor less.
Daniel Lynch
Matt Bruenig has made a reasonable argument that SCOTUS does not have the authority to overrule Congressional law and thus the president has the right to ignore SCOTUS, as Andrew Jackson did. Hence the president’s power is only limited by Congress ability to impeach. That means when Congress is controlled by the president’s party, the president can do pretty much whatever he wants.
You call it a constitutional crisis, I call it a system that was designed to fail. I am not a fan of the presidency and have suggested eliminating that office, or at a minimum, severely restricting its powers. I prefer that laws be executed by civil servants who are accountable to Congress. Switzerland does not have a president and they seem to do OK.
The 14th amendment was aimed at former slaves, not today’s illegal immigrants, so yes there is some wiggle room there. Regardless, we have the right to amend bad laws. I say let’s put it to a popular vote, and I will respect whatever the people decide. That’s how democracy should work.
I’m not seeing any positive reforms on the horizon so the U.S. will probably continue to circle the drain. Which may actually make more people willing to accept a dictator, if our so-called democracy is obviously not working.
GrimJim
All y’all thinking there will ever be a Democrat in the White House again are so funny!
With the power the Repubpicans currently have, they can destroy what remains of the Democrats after the Democrats finish their own implosion.
Clintons? Done. Bidens? Done. Harris? Not even a has been.
Who is in charge of the Democrats?
Nobody.
Oh sure, there are committees and stuff. But there are no names.
No one knows, no one cares. Why?
Because all the remaining power brokers, such as they are, are Super-Mega-Geezers.
They so routinely locked out any younger folk that there is no serious cadre left.
The Squad? Nope. Not going to happen.
The Bernie Bros? Really? Nope.
Newsom? It is to laugh. All anyone will think of is a burning state, when it isn’t melting from rain. I mean, a guy who manages that will fit right in with the dumpster fire of what is left of the US when the Trumpists get done with it, but…
The 2025 Republicans will not lose this opportunity to take all their voting rights destruction nationwide.
They will completely destroy the ability of any non-Republican majority to ever hold office nationally, just as they have done at the state level.
Super-Mega-Dragon-National-Jerrymander coming right up!
That’s what dictators do.
And while Trump is the figurehead, what we are facing is a Republican Dictatorship.
A dictatorship of the party.
They aren’t all falling in line just yet. But Trump and his whips will get them there.
2026 Mid-Terms will be a slaughter. Blue blood everywhere. Republican rule established for… well, for however long the US remains standing.
Not too long, fortunately…
Mark Level
Great post, Grim Jim!! Right on the nose.
I was buying a couple magazines & a book at the local Barnes & Noble last weekend and saw the latest New Yorker cover had a cover story blurb, “Who Wants the Democrats?” I haven’t purchased a NYer in years, they are clueless and entitled Kings of the PMC “Liberal” class, all down for all the Wars, the Financialization and Late Neolib destruction, so my momentary instinct to look at the article was suppressed, nor would I buy the issue for one provocative blurb, they were begging the question, the true answer was clearly “Nobody.” (Except the dumbest ShitLibs, the 32% polled who thought the Biden admin did a “good” job.)
So in the last 24 hours, Trump just gutted the NLRB and worker’s rights that go back to the New Deal!! How? He fired 3 of the 5 members, there is no quorum, it now cannot enforce ANY basic Labor rights for the foreseeable future. Elon is ecstatic, Bezos also. It’s a clear violation of laws to fire members who have no malfeasance, so suppose in a couple weeks or months, the lower courts overturn the firings. Will the millionaires on the Supremes support worker rights? I think 95% of the readers on this blog know the answer, Timmy (& Tallifer, if she is lurking somewhere) accepted.
The Republicans fight. The Dems are Surrender Monkeys, they cower, do weak tea tiny, incremental efforts to pretend to support working people, then sell out at the first (manufactured) opportunity. Joe’s solemn promise in 2020 to double the minimum wage to $15– which might’ve gotten some people to vote Dem, how’d that go? The sacred “Parliamentarian” said NO, fuck working people, issue settled and tossed into the memory hole.
Donald will fuck this country up very badly, I’m sure, but the Dimmies are as dead as the Whigs were in 1859-60. Some people are trying to organize a real LEFT party, “Worker’s Strike Back,” led by the amazing Kshama Sawant, who ably served on the Seattle City Council for 10 years, 2014-24 when she ACTUALLY created gains for local voters in her first term, then the local Dimmie Elites united with the Repugs to Recall her. They failed because she had actually helped people and the voters know it, got one more term, then just gave up because being 1 moral politician in a Klavern of dozens, she had no influence.
I heard the NLRB gutting story on the excellent Due Dissidence podcast today, and they are promoting Workers Strike Back. Good on ’em, I can’t be bothered, I’m getting out of this shit-hole fascist country as soon as I can. I doubt there’s time for a real Left to emerge, it is simply against the “American Way” at this point. Feudalism looms, perhaps even Mencius Moldbug’s vision of aristocrat-run modern slavery.
One side bullies, screams, breaks laws, breaks things, breaks human lives. The other side weakly pretends to oppose this, without ever lifting a finger to actually do so. The Dem party wins a major Darwin Award, as a meaningful organization I would rank it alongside The Flat Earth Society. It has no future. The Donor class won’t bother with them any more, their $$$ lifeblood will be denied, they are Dead (Wo)Men walking, deservedly.