The Trump administration has released a shitstorm of executive actions — a combination of executive orders and hiring/firing/reassigning within executive agencies — many of which are blatantly illegal or unconstitutional.
For example, birth-right citizenship is clearly established in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the power of the purse lies with Congress, as established in Article 1, and the president cannot unilaterally decide to withhold appropriated federal funds; Congress passed a law in 2022 to make it illegal for the president to fire inspectors general without 30-day notice to Congress and a report explaining why that IG needs removed; etc.
(Side quest: It’s obvious that Trump has very little to do crafting any of these orders. One, he’s not that intelligent nor focused. Second, many of these orders are verbatim from Project 2025 or, as in the case of the “buyout” for career civil servants, straight from Elon Musk and other people in Trump’s orbit. In fact, the metadata from several of the memos sent out to federal employees show they were written by people linked to Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation.)
All of these orders and actions have immediate and notable repercussions, and it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae. But I’m looking at the bigger picture.
The vast majority of these actions are illegal and unconstitutional, and the Trump administration knows it. My bet is that Trump’s people are banking on taking each of these to the Supreme Court, where six of nine justices are — to varying degrees — sympathetic to Trump and his causes.
If the Supreme Court continues to rule in favor of Trump the way it has been, Trump’s administration will have successfully consolidated unprecedented power in the executive branch — paving the way for the Christian nationalist dictatorship sought by the extreme conservatives who have surrounded Trump and make up his administration. (Let’s face it — as Heather Cox Richardson phrases it — Trump doesn’t care about anything beyond staying out of jail and having adulation heaped upon him.) And maybe they are banking on getting these cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
However, as Richardson has pointed out, court cases, even expedited ones, can take over a year to conclude. By then, the Trump administration would have demolished the foundational pillars of our secular democratic government. After all, it’s much easier to destroy something than rebuild it.
So what the Trump administration may be doing now is pushing the boundaries to see what it can get away with: put up highly unqualified candidates for top level cabinet positions and see which senators bow down to Trump’s whims; explicitly break a law Congress passed to prevent Trump from firing inspectors general (again) and see what Congress says about it; repeat the same unlawful withholding of funds that got Trump impeached the first time and see how lawmakers and the courts react; etc., etc., etc.
How much power will Congress and the courts cede to Trump — or, rather, the puppeteers pulling strings in his name — without a fight?
Right now, the answer is too much.
What can we do about it?
Honestly, I’m not sure how much we can do that will have a direct impact. Perhaps greater minds than mine will think of something better, because all I know to do is remind our Congresspeople not to cede their power.
Trump is little more than a figurehead at this point. The real power is being wielded by the unnamed, unknown people moving in and out of his orbit. Republican lawmakers keep kowtowing to Trump because his cult-of-personality captured the Republican base, but the policies being implemented by the administration are deeply unpopular. If those policies didn’t bear Trump’s name, the majority of Republican voters vehemently protest against them.
Maybe we get through to our lawmakers by reminding them that Trump can’t and won’t lead the Republican Party forever. But when he’s gone, some of these policies and precedents will remain. So we need to ask our senators and representatives: When Trump’s charisma fades and all that’s left is the stark reality of what they’ve done, do they want to be stuck reaping the consequences?
J. Nelson - Writer 