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.