One week into a new presidency

What to make of the first days of Trump's second term?

One week into a new presidency and it already feels as if we’ve lived through six months of headlines. I’m trying to stick to what I wrote in my last post, which is to hopefully avoid getting sucked in by every little distraction and outrage. I also said I had one more piece coming about politics before I begin more of a varied rotation of posts.

So here it is. Thoughts on four topics from the first week of the second Trump presidency. More specifically, reflections about recent actions that could, in the end, prove harmful to the country’s democratic traditions.

As I said in yet another post, I’m choosing hope for the long term. But as to how things are going in the moment? Uh, not great, Bob:

1. The Constitution

This is the first line of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Pretty clear, no?

On January 20th, Donald Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” A few hours later, he issued an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship and to unilaterally reinterpret the Constitution so that only children born to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents would be considered citizens.

Just saying, but if this action were retroactive (it is not), two individuals who would have been prevented from becoming U.S. citizens are Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri (you might know her by her married name of Usha Vance), who were each born to immigrant parents who’d come to the U.S. legally to study or work but were not permanent residents at the time of their daughters’ births.

This issue is obviously tied up in the nativist movement sweeping part of the country, not unlike the anti-immigrant sentiment that affected the politics of the 1850s, 1880s, or 1920s. But the reality is that the 14th Amendment merely codified what was already a common law tradition for children of immigrants (even if they were mostly white Europeans at the time), and the concept was upheld by a later Supreme Court ruling.

A federal judge (a Reagan appointee) has already blocked Trump’s executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” This pretty much guarantees it will again end up before the Supreme Court, which seems to be the goal of Trump’s order to begin with. He wants to see if this conservative court will rule in his favor, or he at least wants to probe to see how far he can push the boundaries of the Constitution. As one legal expert wrote for Vox:

Much of what Donald Trump has done in his first eight days back in the White House is legally unjustifiable. What’s uncertain is whether the Supreme Court will do anything to stop him.

That, in the end, is the risk to democracy inherent in Trump’s effort. Because if he can get the Court to allow him to expand presidential powers or reinterpret the Constitution, what else might he be able to do?

For instance, could the 1st Amendment right to free speech or assembly be modified to restrict criticism of the government? Before you tell me I’m crazy, understand that other illiberal democracies, such as Hungary, have moved to enact policies exactly like that. And Hungary’s leader, Victor Orban, as we know, is a hero to MAGA conservatives.

Or, what about the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms in office? After all, Trump keeps hinting he might run again in 2028, and a GOP member of Congress recently proposed changing the Constitution to allow for a third term. (Though it’s cleverly written to prevent Barack Obama from running again. Cowards.)

So yeah, this proposed reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment sure seems like an opening gambit to see just how far Trump can go in terms of altering or ignoring parts of the Constitution.

2. The January 6th pardons

It was just last week that Trump issued pardons or commutations for every person convicted of an offense during the January 6th insurrection attempt. Seems like much longer ago. An issue that once would have taken over the media for weeks on end is now almost forgotten within days because of the deluge of headlines flooding our news feeds. And yes, flooding the zone is very much part of the strategy here.

Still, it’s hard to overstate the dangerous precedent of these pardons.

Trump pardoned about 1,500 people who’d been convicted by juries and judges (several hundred of whom were guilty of attacking police officers), ordered the government to drop hundreds of other cases, and commuted the sentences of 14 individuals, mostly members of far-right militia groups who’d received longer sentences for violently attempting to overthrow the government.

This is what even the very conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal had to say about Trump’s actions: “Trump Pardons the Jan. 6 Cop Beaters. Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that GOP?”

It’s true that some of the pardons issued by Joe Biden also set a bad precedent because they were pre-emptive for people who hadn’t been charged with anything. At least those pardons, however, were done out of compassion for those whom the Trump administration had promised to target for revenge. An FBI investigation can upend one’s life and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Still, Biden’s decision to protect these individuals from seemingly unwarranted investigations could also inflict future damage to democracy and I wish it hadn’t come to that.

But it’s nothing like the precedent of pardoning people who committed political violence in your name. This is sending the message that violence is OK, attacks on police officers are OK, thwarting a democratic election is OK, as long as it’s done in support of the president.

One former FBI agent who is familiar with white supremacist and militia groups suggested that Trump’s pardons “sends a very clear message to … the broader far-right militant movement that violent actions taken against perceived enemies or opponents of Donald Trump will be rewarded.”

So Trump essentially has his own foot soldiers now, ready to exact revenge on perceived enemies of his movement. Moreover, members of the administration now know that illegal acts done on the president’s behalf can and probably will be pardoned.

3. The rule of law

For years, the GOP has argued that federal regulations not specifically passed by Congress shouldn’t be legal. These complaints stem from a Supreme Court ruling that said if Congress passed a somewhat ambiguous law then experts at, say, OSHA or the FDA were allowed to interpret that law when setting regulations. The understanding was that Congress couldn’t possibly foresee every upcoming circumstance when it came to workplace safety or drug studies or whatever, so it was reasonable to leave some interpretation to career officials who work on these issues full time.

But last year the Court once again upended decades of precedent and overturned the previous decision, sharply reducing the power of federal agencies to make regulations that weren’t specifically passed by Congress. Republicans rejoiced in the ruling that gave power to Congress over the executive branch.

That was then.

Now, those same Representatives and Senators seem content to let President Trump go much, much further. Never mind interpreting ambiguous laws, now apparently it’s OK to ignore laws that were actually passed by Congress. Consider just three examples:

The spending freeze

The biggest news of the past few days has been the Trump administration’s effort to freeze or stop wide swaths of government spending. This is being done, it was said, to root out “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering.”

Well, the administration is well within its rights to make an argument to Congress to reduce spending for certain programs if it truly believes that health insurance, funding for police officers, cancer research, school lunches, Head Start programs, disaster relief, and the like all amount to Marxist social engineering or whatever. And Congress is controlled by the president’s party, so they’re also free to cut any spending that was previously appropriated. But the point is that the White House has to make that argument to Congress which, according to the Constitution, has the sole power of the purse. The president doesn’t have the authority to make those decisions on his own. No president does.

But, just as with birthright citizenship, what the Trump administration really wants is to force this issue before the Supreme Court and take the chance that they’ll actually reinterpret the Constitution to give the executive branch ever more power.

An interesting aftermath of all this, as I write this post, is that the order to freeze spending caused so much chaos throughout government that it was halted by a federal judge until a case could he heard. The Trump administration then announced it was rescinding the freeze. But then the White House press secretary declared that the freeze wasn’t rescinded, after all, only the memo announcing the freeze.

Got that? Because I don’t. Chaos is the point, after all. When the zone is flooded with contradictions no one knows how to counter it.

The TikTok ban

Last year, Congress voted overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis (360-58 in the House and 79-18 in the Senate) to ban TikTok because of national security concerns unless it was sold to a company that didn’t have ties to the Chinese government. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban.

This issue, remember, arose during Trump’s first term in office when he himself wanted to ban TikTok. Now, though, seemingly because of the president’s campaign success on the platform, along with ties to a billionaire donor who is a TikTok investor, he has flip-flopped and says he wants to save the app. So he issued an executive order of dubious legality postponing the ban — essentially overruling both Congress and the Supreme Court.

Again, whatever he now thinks of the legislation, a U.S. president doesn’t have that authority. Through the use of executive orders, presidents have some authority to decide how to implement parts of a law, but not whether to implement one.

The fired inspectors general

The Trump administration just summarily fired 18 inspectors general, ignoring a law that says these officials can only be dismissed with 30 days notice to Congress and with a list of “substantive reasons for why the inspector general is being removed.” The reason this law exists is that inspectors general are supposed to be independent, nonpartisan officials who look for corruption, fraud, and abuse within the government.

Don’t we want independent officials whose job it is to root out corruption in government? Apparently not if you work for this administration, laws or not.

4. A culture of fear and intimidation

Just some notes from a week of news:

• At the National Prayer Service last week, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde asked the president to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” It was not a diatribe but a plea for compassion. The words could almost have come from the Sermon on the Mount. See for yourself, if you want:

Trump’s response was to demand an apology from the Episcopal Church and to call the bishop “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” Meanwhile, a GOP Congressman recommended the Bishop be put on a deportation list!

• During his first term, Trump had a high-ranking Iranian general assassinated. In response, Iran has allegedly targeted Trump for assassination, along with his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton. As a result, Pompeo and Bolton were given Secret Service protection by the Biden administration. This week, Trump rescinded the protections for Pompeo and Bolton because they’ve criticized him in recent years, even though the reason they’re at risk is because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf.

• Trump also rescinded the security detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has received death threats from some on the far right because of anger over government decisions during the covid pandemic.

• The official portraits of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and former Defense Secretary Mike Esper have been removed from the Pentagon, also because they’ve criticized Trump. Milley’s security detail and security clearance were also revoked.

• Trump said in an interview last week that former President Biden should have pardoned himself on his way out of office and then he appeared to threaten the former president with investigations or indictments. “The funny thing — maybe the sad thing — is he didn’t give himself a pardon … I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with … It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also,” said Trump.

• The president later ordered his Justice Department to open an investigation into the Biden administration for “weaponization of the federal government” and “censorship of speech.”

• Trump also called for MSNBC to be shut down.

• GOP Senators have been told, in no uncertain terms, that they’re either all in or not on Trump’s appointees. “It’s pass-fail. You either support everyone or you don’t,” a senior White House official said. Elon Musk has threatened to fund primary challengers to any GOPer who doesn’t get in line.

• A meteorologist for a local Milwaukee television station last week criticized Elon Musk on her personal social media feed. A local conservative talk radio host somehow saw it and decided it’d be fun to stir up a storm of MAGA outrage against her. The television station didn’t want to deal with the pressure and so fired its meteorologist over one personal post criticizing Musk.

I have no further comment here, other than this is not normal. None of it.

Other than that, though, hey, things are great.

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Images of (a) the Oval Office and (b) the scales of justice are via Shutterstock.