Tag: Supreme Court

Yes, Virginia, There is a Trump Clause

I am damned angry.  The democrats once again appear prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on promises of talks later. Coming off great results in Virginia and New Jersey and California in last week’s elections with national consequences, it did not take long for the Democrats to deflate like a pricked ballon once again at the national level.

My first thoughts on hearing a number of Democrats defecting on the shutdown showdown:  Mother Fuckers!  (not really, it was longer and more expressive) Why, after 40 days of standing up to, and resisting Trump and his autocratic agenda, did Democrats cave on their supposed principles?  Why?  Senator Kaine, what were you thinking?

You claimed to stand fast with American workers who were going to get slammed with extreme health insurance premium increases because subsidies were cut by Trump’s big, beautiful bill.  You lobbed the health insurance ball firmly into the Republicans court — who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court — in order to extend the subsidies, hoping to provoke a compromise.  They held fast.  

In this standoff, the only power left to the Democrats was solidarity and the senate filibuster to force negotiations.  But no, you give up that last bastion of protecting minority rights in Congress to force negotiations and compromise.  So, after 40 days you have nothing to show if you cave in.

You gave up the two hallmarks of democracy with a half assed fight. Can you be trusted to fight Trump’s trespasses when he invokes the insurrection act or martial law or challenges the results of the 2026 mid-terms; to fight for the working and middle classes?  I think you will be halfway to the hills with your tail between your legs, that’s what I think, leaving state and local democrats holding the proverbial bag of shit.

No wonder Democrats in national polls  aren’t trusted to do the right thing at the national level.  The public, given the asymmetric power relationship in Congress, blamed the Republicans for the shutdown and associated pain. I think virtually overnight that blame will shift to you. 

I supported the principled stand on health care subsidies, but I also thought it was about resisting Trump’s autocratic gains, protecting the rule of law, and our constitutional system of checks and balances.  Apparently not.   You now own the shutdown. For taking a stand, you were essentially unwilling and incapable of following through on.  

Come on man, get some balls, some chutzpa, some spine.  Why all the pain and suffering and angst endured by millions when you collapse like a mud hut in a rainstorm?  All for promises of future talks in December, exchanging your principles for a bag of magical beans.  The Republicans have chutzpa at least. They lie to the Supreme Court that they don’t have the cash to pay out full SNAP benefits yet a day or two later, after the Court agrees with Trump, Trump announces taxpayers will get $2000 each from a so called tariff divided. What don’t you get about them? Did you not read the fine print under the Trump Clause?

Trump Clause:  Any and all agreements made with Donald Trump are conditional, subject to change, lies, misrepresentations, and omissions.  You take his word at your own peril and risk.

I don’t know whether this round of spending bills will pass the hurdles before it, but I do predict that should the spending bills pass to reopen the government, that promise to have December talks to extend the ACA subsidies will vanish like a cheese burger on Trump’s lips.  The House and Senate will adjourn without passing the subsidy bill, and you know it.  The Republicans have stolen Christmas from millions of Americans and you are his accessory after the fact if you give in. 

In Congress, July 4, 1776

It is good now and then to read some of our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence is a good place to start as any. It basically is two documents. The first part is a declarative statement that both King and Parliament have, and continued to, violate the the fundamental and inalienable rights bequeathed to Englishmen since time immemorial. Such trespasses forced the colonists, so they wrote, to form a new government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The second part is a jeremiad of those violations. Of the 27 listed grievances, our president has also committed many of these same trespasses. These include, (1) obstructing the administration of justice; (2) he has attempted to make judges dependent upon him; (3) deployed members of our “standing army” among us in times of peace; (4) he is attempting to render the military independent of and superior to Congress; (5) he has threatened to send Americans overseas to serve time in foreign jails for pretended offenses; (6) for cutting off our trade with the world with illegal tariffs; (7) of imposing taxes on us without our consent (illegal tariffs); (8) depriving many inhabitants of due process virtually suspending habeas corpus; (9) and threatens weekly, if not daily, to declare certain cities out of his protection and insinuate waging war against them.

About 30 percent of the fundamental rights listed by our revolutionary founders they claimed the King and Parliament violated are the same inalienable rights Trump is violating, attempting to violate, or wants to violate. To this list of violations, we can add end birthright citizenship; shutdown the government; hijacking the enumerated rights of Congress; the president not subject to criminal jurisdiction (a King).

What is at stake is not just our Constitution — our written framework of our government and how it should function to protect our inalienable rights — but to the unwritten fundamental rights and laws that make up our social compact with our government. These rights go back to not only the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, but to the traditions, customs, and common law of England. They predate our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other constitutional amendments. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights don’t grant us these rights, they are an acknowledgment of the collective rights we inalienable have had since time immemorial. Trump has no right to deny or suppress them and he must be resisted.

The Declaration of Independence

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

The Strange Death of Liberal Congress (Small l)

 Elected assemblies were no stranger to colonial Americans before the Revolution.  Virginia’s General Assembly first meet in 1619.  The American colonies’ long experiences with representative assemblies informed the debate on the creation of our national government as expressed in our Constitution.

The Constitution created three separate and equal branches:  Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  The legislative branch was divided into two.  A House of Representatives, directly elected by the people every two years, and a Senate.  The Senators were not elected by the folks of their states but picked by state legislators.  This changed in 1913 — in an age of reform after Gilded Age excesses when ‘robber barons’ (proto-tech bros) bought and sold senators – when the 17th Amendment was adopted.  This amendment made senators directly elected and accountable to the people of their various states. 

As the drafters of the Constitution debated structure of the national legislature, it is clear many mistrusted rule by the masses.  The solution was another level of checks and balances:  A divided Congress.   The House was meant to represent the hot and passionate voice of the people, hence the two-year election cycle.  The Senate was meant to temper and cool the passions of the people, hence the six-year terms.  A ying-yang type of thing. 

In its time, it was a liberal creation (small l).  A directly elected national assembly rare.  Although one must add a huge asterisk to that claim as suffrage was primarily reserved for men who owned property, and in many instances in the early republic to white men only.  Eventually the franchise did expand, with women being the last added. As a side note, I should comment that white immigrant men could and did vote in national elections as voting rights were not tied to citizenship until well into to the 19th century.   Many states permitted immigrants the right to vote into the early 20th century.  The nationalism of the post-world war I era ended that practice.

The enumerated duties of Congress were listed in the Constitution, but, it’s primary duty was a check on the power of President (king) — in the liberal tradition of Great Britian since the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  As such, the list of congressional powers was long and gave congress the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the regulation of the militia and Army, the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, to list a few.  For the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and confirm presidential nominees to high office was added.  

This system basically worked for close to 236 years, until it didn’t.  It’s not the structure.  Our political party system is fatally broken.  You need two parties, not one party and one cult lead by a messianic Daddy Trump.

Congress is dead.  Long live Trump.  

A postmortem would reveal the cause of death as neglect followed by blunt force trauma.  The manner of death?  Democracide.

 Et Tu, Johnson and Thune?  Speaker Mike Johnson and senate majority leader John Thune have murdered Congress, finishing the job started by Mitch McConnell.   Johnson won’t even call the House back into session and Thune has attached himself to Trump’s scrotum like a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. This week Sec Def Hegseth severely constrained congressional oversight by severing most routine formal and informal discourse between congress and the Defense Department and one trillion dollars in spending.  

Trump literally shits on the people in his AI generated fantasies and Congress defends him. He frequently moves money without congressional official approval and routinely uses rescission to ignore legislative funding bills.  In short, Congress ceded most of its enumerated powers to Trump.  Even the act of declaring war has been ceded, permitting Trump to order extra judicial killings on the high seas.  In the old days we called that piracy.  Congress is dead in name. 

The Supreme Court is the undertaker.

I have no concluding paragraph.  What is there left to say any more?  The phrases “that’s illegal” or “that’s unconstitutional” are deader than a door nail in a post law and order America. Might as well stop using them as they are as useless as Congress and a spittoon full of spit.

Where Have our Better Angels Gone? Four murders, four Americas

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

George Floyd, Brian Thompson, Melissa Hortman, and Charlie Kirk were murdered.  Yet, how America responded writ large to these individual murders is a telling insight into today’s divisions in America, of who has political capital, the power to weld it, and importantly, who lacks it.  

Murder is not unusual in America. In 1991, for every 100K Americans there were almost 11 murders.  By 2014 that number dropped to about 5 per 100K.  In 2024 that number was relatively the same after a pandemic spike in 2020 of 7 per 100k.  Most were gun related murders, averaging about 17K to 18K per year.  The leading cause of death of kids under 18 in America is gun violence.  As a nation we offer them prayers, for a select few, we fight over their deaths.

It is not surprising then, that three of the four persons mentioned above were shot to death.  Floyd’s death was unusual, a prolonged public spectacle when a police officer used a knee to compress Floyd’s neck for a prolonged period on a busy street, in broad daylight ,while two other police officers stood by, and witnesses filmed the unfolding murder while pleading to not hurt him.

Today, I am not concerned with their manner of death but with American’s reaction to them.  

In 2020, George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests over policing practices and culture in America and the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers; along with other issues of mass incarceration and disparate treatment by the justice system.  The Black Lives Matter movement emerged from these protests.  Backlash was immediate.  Conservative media outlets pointed to Floyd’s criminal record or his alleged drug use to exculpate the police officer’s actions.  

Despite the backlash, some reforms did occur at local and state levels, but not at the federal level.  Today, physical representations of that protest movement that pushed for nationwide police reform are literally being bulldozed.  In March of this year, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC was torn up and paved over after pressure from President Trump.  

In 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of the major health insurance company United Healthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours by a lone gunman.  Unlike most murders, it garnered national attention.  After a five-day manhunt the alleged shooter was arrested.  Again, unlike most murders, the shooter became something of a social media folk hero, a modern-day Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde Fame.  He even was given the nickname ‘the adjuster.’  This reflected deep anger by everyday Americans on both side of the aisle against health insurance corporate bureaucracy and greed.  Not much empathy for Thompson or his family.

In June 2025, Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state legislatures House Speaker, and her husband were gunned downed at their home by a lone gunman.  The gunman also shot two others at another home.  The nation was stunned and shocked by these politically motivated killings and shootings.  However, the right-wing and President Trump unfortunately decided to use the killings to score political points.  Attacking Minnesota’s Governor Walz, a political opponent who ran against him on Kamal Harris’s ticket, Trump called him “wacked out Walz” and refused to call him to offer condolences, saying it would be a “waste of time.”  Some on the right said the killer was a ‘Marxist.’ Elon Musk blamed the “far left” for the shooting.

For her and her husband, no reforms, no National Day of Mourning, no flag at half-staff, no White House rage at a political killing.  The other day, when asked about the double standard of ordering the lowering of the flag for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump, whose better angels are dead or deported, responded that he “wasn’t familiar” with the Minnesota shooting.  

On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and influencer, was shot to death at an event at Utah Vallery University by a lone gunman.  Shock once again swept the country.  National leaders on the left expressed near universal regret and sadness.   The right expressed near universal outrage and anger.  Over the past week, that rage and anger grew, it seemed.  On the right, vengeance was promised and the White House vowed to investigate far left networks or groups for the Kirk killing, without evidence of a conspiracy.  

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has already called the Democratic Party a terrorist organization, vowed to “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network.”   The Justice Department said it was going to investigate “hate speech,” although the Attorney General did back track after criticism.  Nonetheless, calls to criminally investigate the Soros organization and the Ford Foundation as terrorist funders were made.  Even labelling some domestic left leaning groups ‘terrorist organizations” was floated, to include by Trump, who said he wouldn’t mind appending the terrorist label to Antifa.  Antifa has no known organization to which to attach it to.  It’s more idea than organization.  

The Pentagon vowed firings and crack downs on posts deemed critical of Kirk or celebratory or his death. The Department of State also vowed a crackdown on visa holders who criticize Kirk or celebrate his death.  I don’t recall similar vows when Representative Hortman and her husband were killed.   

Elon Musk in a video played at a far-right protest in England said, “We either fight back or die.”  And in a post, demanded the arrest of one rapper for criticizing Kirk and accused universities of “programming people to murder.”  Some right-wing social media called for mass arrests and even civil war. 

It’s one thing for social media influencers, cranks and crackpots, and fringe elements to threaten and intimidate and engage in conspiracy theory spin.  It is completely another thing for senior government officials to threaten vengeance and engage in conspiracy theories while calling for the extirpation of left leaning speech and organizations. Is the criminalization of dissent coming in a forthcoming executive order?

In an example of our government’s authoritarian shift,  yesterday ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show after threats by the Chair of the Federal Communication Commission to pull licensees after Kimmel made remarks about the Kirk’s killer’s political affiliation.  Meanwhile, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on-air last week that mentally ill homeless people should be executed.  His co-hosts offered no rebuttal.  No threats from the FCC to cancel licenses for advocating mass executions. Another example of our authoritarian government’s willingness to control speech of those that do not conform to the governments messaging.  

So, here we are.  Four murders, four different reactions, four different Americas it seems.  I do not want to flatten or simplify the reactions to the murders because there were many individual and collective responses by a broad range of folks, some good, some bad, some ugly.  But as a nation, we have struggled to find common ground or cause over politically motivated killings because we now instinctively split into our respective camps, which increasingly aren’t ideological – like a working-class consciousness — but ones based on race and religion.  80 percent of Trump voters were white.  

It is clear we are now led by a sectarian national government, a government increasingly narrow-minded and protective of ‘tribal’ affiliations.  Kirk was the personification of this sectarianism and white Christian nationalist identity politics for young Americans, young American men in particular. This white Christian nationalism movement dominates our national government.  

Kirk didn’t deserve a violent death for his racist commentary, trans bigotry, or anti-Islam sentiment.  However odious someone’s speech may be, they are engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.  We must disagree through discourse and words, not violence and bullets.  Unfortunately, our government seems to have abandoned this principle and is playing favorites as to who has the right to speak freely without fear of government discipline and punishment.

How then, as a nation, can we find common cause and ground to express our views openly and without fear of retaliation when even our government has abandoned the principle of free speech, plays favorites?  Can we ever find that common ground as a nation, bring out our better angels?

It’s not coincidental that I end I began this essay with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’ first inaugural address.  He too died from a cowardly assassin’s bullet. He spoke these words when secessionist war clouds threatened America over an intractable issue:  slavery.  I think as a nation we are at a similar inflection point over a myriad of seemingly intractable issues.  

Liberty’s Chrysalis

“The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted; and never cloy’d by possession.”

Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount of Bolingbroke

This spring my wife and I planted a small rain garden.  The plantings included several swamp milkweeds, the preferred plant for Monarchs to lay their eggs on.  It’s Latin name is Asclepias incarnata for the serious gardeners out there.  The other day, to our delight, we discovered a dozen monarch caterpillars denuding the milkweeds.  

It took several days for them to consume every leaf.  Fully fueled with toxic bitterness and relatively immune from predation, they slowly wandered off to other plants, leaving the bare stalks of the milkweed as testament to their presence.  One by one they moved on, rambling off into the garden seeking leaves or branches to safely transform into chrysalises.  

Within several days of the caterpillar migration, we spotted two bright green chrysalises hanging under leaves.  A third caterpillar wasn’t quite there yet. We hope that within 14 days, given the mild weather, the caterpillars will be reborn as butterflies.  A well-tended garden brings unexpected joys.

The discovery of the caterpillars reminded me of the words of Henry Saint John, that liberty is like a tender plant.  He penned these words close to 300 years ago and the metaphor could not be more relevant in our time: “liberty is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it; nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care.”  

He wrote these words in the early 18th century, a time of upheaval in England: political factions vying for power in a deadly struggle.  He didn’t always choose wisely, backing the Stuart’s claim to the crown and the ensuing Jacobite Rebellion, ending up in exile in France for some time.  He is most famous, I think, for his essay “The Idea of a Patriot King,” arguing that a King should be above faction.

This idea of a King above faction is important in our own history. It informed how Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams saw the presidency.  A president above faction.  They tried mightily to be above faction, not always successfully, however.  Andrew Jackson threw the notion of a patriot president out a White House window along with the contents of a chamber pot.   

Today, we are ruled by an unsound and troubled president hell bent on hyper factionalizing our country, resorting to violence and armed soldiers patrolling city streets.   He has taken the notion of faction to new extremes in America, not seen since the late 1850s.   This includes sending the military to occupy blue cities to show his political muscle;  flaunting the rule of law; criminally investigating critics; ruling solely by dictate; musing publicly about being a dictator; rewriting our history; engaging in extrajudicial killings on the high seas off Venezuela; and setting the stage to nullify next year’s mid-term election results unfavorable to him.

Our garden of democracy needs tending.  And damn quickly.  

We must steadfastly feed and nourish our democracy.  Stay informed in the face of daily trespassing against our liberty.  Although in today’s world where most Americans get their ‘news’ through social media, ‘informed’ is perhaps obsolete.  There still are reliable news sources out there.  Social media is not one of them.  Social media is an avalanche of computer driven feeds designed to elicit clicks, rage, and profit.  Curate your news sources. Go old fashioned and read books, lots of them.  The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know about things you thought you knew a great deal about. That’s a good thing.

We must clear out the authoritarian weeds that plague our garden of democracy.  We must elect leaders that reflect our values and are in tune with today’s generation and willing to fight.  The continual reelection of octogenarians does the party no good.  

We must go to the polls this November and elect Abigail Spanberger governor and weed out the noxious plants occupying Virginia’s governor’s mansion.  We must not just elect her but elect her in a historical landslide. We don’t want to become an autocratic state like Texas or Florida. 

We must seed our garden of democracy with plants that are robust and acclimated to our current political reality:  An opposition party bent on one-party authoritarian rule.  We can do that by supporting new faces and ideas in the Democratic party at all levels.  Starting with David Rogers who is running for the Mineral seat in our local board of supervisors.

We must amend the soil of our garden.  Get friends and family to register to vote, get them to the polls on election days.  Attend rallies or local meetings.  Donate to candidates you support.  If you can, canvas for that candidate. Volunteer with the Louisa Democrats.

We must not only resist the orange piped piper of Mar-a-Lago but fight him at every junction.  Write or call your representatives, write the Supreme Court Justices, write our governor.  Tell them your story and how you are impacted by Trump’s dangerous and illegal actions.  That food, housing, and healthcare will be unaffordable and unattainable once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, deportation of farm and food processing workers, and regressive taxes are felt.   

Plant a garden an act of subversion against Trump’s war on climate science.  Whether you have only a south facing front door stoop, a small balcony, or quarter acre, or ten acres, plant a garden in the dirt or in pots.  Every plant you grow feeds or houses an insect or animal and soaks up carbon.  Get radical and grow a victory garden.

Our garden of democracy is in big trouble, but with our incessant care and nourishment our democracy can flourish once again.  Together we must tend the garden of democracy and create the space and time to protect and nurture liberty’s chrysalis from Trump’s insatiable drive to possess absolute power. 

Creeping Normalcy: America’s Long Slide to Autocracy?

Using alleged claims of ‘blood thirsty criminals’ running rampant as a pretext, in an extraordinary move Daddy Trump virtually seized the Federal District this week.  Is it another deliberative act of incrementally normalizing authoritarian behavior and a conspicuous display of white supremacy.

It is a symbolic military occupation of the nation’s capital.  Deploying 800 (maybe a 1000) guardsmen and taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department is more symbol than practical, but a dangerous one, nonetheless.   The capital is the heart of our democracy and conspicuous displays of military power at checkpoints and patrols smacks of authoritarianism.  But in a week or two, it will be normalized, like the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines in the heart of Los Angeles.  

In addition to the deployment of DC national guardsmen, the Pentagon announced plans today to increase the readiness of National Guard units to deploy forces to contain civil unrest. They call them Quick Reaction forces, which you normally find in combat zones.  Why I ask, when there is no civil unrest, does the pentagon need to stand up National Guard quick reaction forces?  Is this foreshadowing? Perhaps Trump plans some actions that would provoke civil unrest.  Like declaring martial law in blue states.

It is also a conspicuous display of white supremacy.  Last week the White House announced that two statues of confederates removed several years ago will be reinstalled in the district.  It is not coincidental, I believe, that he juxtaposed announcements of the return of symbols of white supremacy with an out-of-control criminal element in a District ruled primarily by elected African Americans.   Weekly it seems, the Trump administration continues to normalize white governance and supremacy.

The takeover of the capital must be understood in the context to other incremental actions by the president and his regime.  These recent actions follow weeks of an agitated Trump going on rants about treasonous presidents and former cabinet officials.  Histrionics that seem more likely to come out the mouth of a tweaked-out meth head than a president.   

Aiding him is a Justice Department that no longer pretends to wear the mantle of independence, creeping ever closer to Stasi-like policing:  purges, investigating political opponents, grand jury inquests against state’s attorneys and independent counsels that investigated Trumps varied criminal acts, and flipping civil rights investigations on their heads.  Even the Department of Labor is not immune from purges as the head of Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired by Trump after a jobs report that showed dismal growth.    

Three in the morning tweets from Daddy Trump alleging criminal mischief by his political enemies are now normalized behavior – endless fodder for late night comedy no doubt– when in fact they are disturbing displays of Trump’s unstable state of mind.   They invariable result in leaders at the Justice Department and FBI to order criminal inquiry’s days later.  This is how authoritarians do business and it’s become normal.  That the Justice Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security are morphing into Trump’s personal praetorian guard should scare the crap out of Americans.  They are loyal to him, not us. I am surprised at how easy it was to do.  

In an earlier piece, I cautioned my fellow federal law enforcement officers that they have a choice when the president orders them to do immoral and illegal things, that they will have a decision to make.  Sadly, too many in the Department of Homeland Security have already made their decision it seems.  They went to the dark side…. apparently succumbing to promises of bonuses that run in the thousands of dollars.    More 19thcentury slave catcher than 21st century federal agent.

Our much-cherished separation of powers is gone, it appears.  Congress?  Absent as usual.  Speaker Johnson basically prorogued the House of Representatives to prevent hearings regarding Trump’s deep involvement in a sex trafficking pedophilia scandal.  A bit later the Senate left the Capital like a lover slips out of a lovers window as a spouse arrives home.  When they return, they will be returning a different Washington, one militarily occupied, at least symbolically, and controlled by Trump. So much for the conservative mantras ‘liberty or die’ or ‘don’t tread on me.’

And where is the Supreme Court?  Oh, never mind.

There’s a term of art for what is happening in America: creeping normalcy.  The incremental normalization of the abnormal through gradual shifts in behavior.   It is plain and clear what is happening, but it feels like most Americans, clutching their myth of American Exceptionalism like a security blanket, are in denial, unwilling to acknowledge the incremental normalization of authoritarian behavior as we slip and slide toward the demise of our democracy.  

At this point in time, I fear, momentum alone will take us to that place we don’t want to go.  The enablers – Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court – keep handing Trump increased power, acting like there will never ever be another elected Democratic President to use those new powers.  Perhaps that’s the plan, starting with normalizing National Guard deployments to quell so-called civil unrest.

A Virginian’s “Notes” on the Constitution

This week, after another dismal showing by the Supreme Court, I asked myself whether our Constitution is all smoke and mirrors.  A Potemkin Village.  A parchment signifying nothing.  Like Macbeth’s soliloquy for his dead wife, “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”  

At least that is how I interpreted a recent series of Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings.  As someone who spent 29 years in law enforcement and for decades closely read the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s quarterly summaries of federal court rulings as they pertained to constitutional rights, it is my considered judgment that the Supreme Court has abandoned sanity and the rule of law in favor of partisan power.  

One of my favorite references as to the intent of the framers of our Constitution is James Madison’s ‘Notes on the Constitutional Convention.’  My copy is well worn, with markers and scribbles in the margins and since January 20 has been a constant companion.   I even had Chief Justice Scalia sign it when he visited the embassy in Lisbon when I was assigned there between 2005 and 2008.

Every time the Supreme Court makes a ruling, I go to Madison’s ‘Notes’ — and the Federalist essays — and read the debates at the convention relevant to the issue the Court just decided.  The delegates at the convention did not leave many stones unturned in their debates, disputes we continue to dredge up and debate to this day. As for the conservative super majority, who fancy themselves die hard textualists and originalists, they seem to ignore the intent, spirit, and tone of the constitutional convention when it suits them, if not the very text of the Constitution.  

The ‘Notes,’ are a compilation of Madison’s minutes of the daily proceedings of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia during the scorching summer months of 1787.  It was published posthumously some 50 years after the convention.  Revised and amended by Madison over the 50 years before publication, one must approach the ‘Notes’ cautiously.  Nonetheless, they are a remarkable account of the discourse and debates that resulted in our Constitution.  Madison’s summaries of the day-to-day debates, however flawed, provided unique insights into the worldview of the delegates that created our government and fundamental laws of the land. 

Our Constitution was radical and captured the spirit and ideas of over 300 years of renaissance and enlightenment thinking, enshrining into a written constitution the primacy of the people as sovereign:  We the people.  Nonetheless, our new Constitution was far from perfect.  In fact, it was deeply flawed because those at the convention convinced themselves that slavery was on its way to extinction, that it would diffuse and extinguish itself soon.  Instead, they ended up sacrificing generations of captive African Americans to slavery for the sake of white national unity.  As it turned out, they only deferred our country’s reckoning with slavery until 1861.  It would take a ‘second’ founding after a Civil War to amend the Constitution to reflect the original premise of the Declaration of Independence, the bit about equality. 

Our founding thinkers did not invent democracy, republics, or even the concept of separation of powers.  The ideas that animated their debates go back to Greece and Rome,16th century Republics such as Florence, Renaissance writers such as Machiavelli, and later enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Hume, and Rousseau.  If anything, our founders took their history seriously.  They believed in the ancient notion of virtuous leaders and feared the mob, that is the tyranny of the majority.  

The result a novel invention of a republic with two sovereigns – sovereign states within a sovereign federal union – and a hybrid government mix of the one, the few, the many (President, Senate, House of Representatives).   The key ingredient: built in checks and balances.  In short, compromise.  A word now considered a pejorative by right wing conservatives.  

They codified their fears into hard checks and balances into our founding document.  Co-equal branches of government, designed to check one another out of jealousy for one’s own power.  That is the foundation, the spine, the bedrock, whatever metaphor you want to use, of our Constitution.  Without checks and balances it collapses like a dying star.  

Our history is complex.  On the one hand, America has a legacy of horrific racist policies since independence from England: slavery, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, Chinese Exclusion Act, Separate but Equal segregation, interment of Japanese Americans are but a few.   But there was also the New Deal, the long Civil Rights movement, and women’s suffrage. Through all this our constitutional system – the mechanics — functioned as designed for the most part.

The mechanics of our system is collapsing.  Since January 20, ruling by decree, Trump is squashing America’s rule of law like a junkyard car crusher.   The cowards in Congress mute as they render themselves into useless piles of worthless scrap.   While Democrat leaders twirled and lurched like bungling idiots during the initial onslaught of presidential decrees, the lower courts held their ground, pausing many of these orders after hearing arguments.  Unsung men and women if you ask me.  For the most part the appeals courts also held firm.  

The Supreme Court on the other hand is a disaster, ripping out the valves, pistons, and belts that kept our system humming.  They continue to hand Trump unprecedented powers one shadow docket ruling after another.  And in their own power grab, kneecapping the lower courts.  In many cases, rulings are announced without even offering an explanatory opinion: the ‘why.’  Mostly I think because they don’t have a legally sound ‘why’ to back up their decrees.   Yes, that is what their rulings have become in essence under this regime of shadow dockets: Decrees.  Like a solar eclipse, the proliferation of these rulings is thrusting the rule of law into darkness, something one sees in authoritarian regimes. 

So, here is where we are now. 

In Philadelphia 238 years ago, a group of delegates representing 12 of the 13 states, assembled, debated, and drafted the rudimentary structure of a new type of government never seen before.  The great experiment began.  They knew the document they produced wasn’t perfect, and they recognized the need to be able to change the document with the times, outlining a process to amend the Constitution through considered debate and argument.  They were also cleared eyed about power and how it corrupts, building in checks and balances.  

Those checks and balances are disappearing like Epstein’s client list.  We now have a President who unilaterally rewrites the Constitution through edict and is immune from official acts that are criminal in nature; a Supreme Court that unilaterally changes the Constitution through opaque shadow rulings; a Congress and Supreme Court willfully and energetically empowering a tyrant King.  Like Macbeth’s monologue, I ask myself, “Is American democracy on its way to dusty death?”  Our candle snuffed out? 

It is not too late. The candle can be relit but will take time and effort.  We should focus on what we, in Virginia, can control.  The next step is to vote Abigail Spanberger in as Governor this November and keep our state legislature majority blue.  This November’s election will be a bellwether for the mid-terms the following year.  It is an opportunity for Virginians to send a message to Trump, the do-nothing Virginian Republican sycophants in Congress, and the Supreme Court.  

A Letter to Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Dear Justice Barrett,

It seems that you all have a Trumpian wolf by the ears.  Can’t let go, can you?

A case in point is your recent majority opinion that lower-level federal courts do not have authority to issue universal injunctions, eviscerating 60 plus years of American common law. You based this opinion from your reading of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 and your deep historical analysis of Great Britain’s courts at the time of our country’s founding, concluding English courts did not have authority to issue universal injunctions, so we shouldn’t either.  Pray tell, in your exhaustive historical analysis did you happen by chance to read anything about presidents ruling solely by illegal decrees?

You also argued that ‘complete’ and ‘universal’ injunctions were not synonymous.  Your parsing of the meanings between complete and universal seemed to me like watching two drunk uncles argue the difference between jam and preserves at a family brunch. Amusing….. worthless and pointless.

You further pointed out that from about 1962 to the present, lower federal courts did issue universal injunctions. Rarely, but that recently they have become too common.  Why you dismissed almost 63 years of federal jurisprudence and common law, is beyond me. 

You sum up your thoughts with an aphorism: “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”  I think your dictum fails to see the forest from the trees.  You just gave the executive branch immense power to act extra constitutionally without fear of judicial restraint. Sort of like an open marriage, no?

What you don’t see, but what Hamilton and Madison did see, is that the Constitution is a parchment barrier to tyranny.  The Constitution requires virtuous presidents and virtuous legislators and virtuous judges to survive.  Trump is not virtuous by any stretch of the imagination, and you know that.  Congress has abdicated its’ powers.  Yet, you and Roberts act like Trump is virtuous and a ‘normal’ president.  

The Court had the opportunity during the Biden administration to make this ruling when multiple courts issued universal injunctions against his executive orders.  You refused White House demands for relief, particularly those dealing with student loan forgiveness. Your timing is suspect.  One can argue that you all just think conservative presidents can or should rule by decree, but not liberal ones.  Or, one can argue, you fear angering Trump, that you are pulling your judicial punches out of terror.  You nurtured and protected this wolf when it was young, now you have this wild, undomesticated snarling beast by the ears, bared teeth inches from your face.  And you caved.  I think the legal term is ‘Mingo ones Braccas’ or in English ‘pissed one’s pants.’

At its core, your ruling was fickle and weak, even naïve, and follows a pattern of avoiding Trump’s public rage.   In times like this boldness is required.   Hamilton warned of this in Federalist 78, of the judiciary’s weakness in comparison to the ‘sword’ of the executive branch and the ‘purse’ of the legislative branch.  Instead of being independent of the executive branch – what your boss liked to call balls and strikes — you all have a Stockholm syndrome like relationship with Trump, crowning him King last term, now giving him additional powers to wreck executive havoc without early and frequent checks by the judiciary.  Your rulings only embolden Trump and reduce avenues for timely non-violent redress of Trump’s executive branch power grabs.  Let me repeat the critical part, your ruling reduces avenues for timely non-violent redress to Trump’s illegal acts.

You opened an executive power pandora’s box.  You all on the Court are fond of hypotheticals.  Let’s do some to explore logical outcomes of your decision:

Hypothetical One: Trump issues an executive order invalidating the 13th Amendment, arguing it was ratified under duress.  Effective immediately slavery would no longer be illegal.  By your ruling, slavery would be legal throughout the land, unless paused locally, until the Supreme Court got around to declaring the executive order unconstitutional.  

Hypothetical Two:  Trump declares Brown v. Board of Education void and orders the segregation of federal government offices, schools, and facilities, permitting the designation of “whites only” spaces.  By your ruling, ‘separate but equal’ would be legal throughout the land, unless paused locally, until you all at the Supreme Court got around to declaring the executive order unconstitutional.  

While you may think that these hypothetical executive orders are outrageous, don’t you think the ban on birthright citizenship is just as wicked? While purporting to be race neutral, the ban is blatantly racist, targeting predominantly brown and black undocumented migrants and their unborn children, who make up the bulk of migrants to this country in this era.  If the bulk of undocumented migrants were from predominantly white countries, vice Mexico, Central or South America, or Africa, there would be no ban on birthright citizenship.  Yet you casually let the ban start in 30 days.  You could have made the same ruling but paused implementation for 90 days. One suspects that the Court will overturn birthright citizenship, in part, soon.

Furthermore, post-ruling remarks by you and Roberts are not helpful.  Chief Justice Roberts’ comment, “It would be good if people appreciated it’s not the judges’ fault that a correct interpretation of the law meant that, no, you don’t get to do this,…”  That’s funny because mostly you all rule that Trump gets to do just what he wants in most every shadow docket case that comes before you.  You know, from a philosophical and humanist perspective, a ‘correct’ interpretation is not always the ‘right’ ruling.  Things aren’t always black and white.  

Roberts’ comments show just how detached and callus your conservative majority have become.  You act as if your decisions are purely academic exercises, without any real-life consequences, such as being born stateless in America or being put to death.  You won’t be up to your assess in alligators but many literally will be.

If you wrestle with these paradoxes and nuances and life shattering decisions, it does not show in your antiseptic prose or victory laps.  Show some humanity, will you.  And as for your comments about Justice Jackson, I would rather have an imperial judiciary – since it doesn’t have the sword or the purse — than an unchecked imperial crazy-like-a-loon presidency, although I don’t wish to insult the Common Loon, which is a beautiful waterbird with a wonderful, haunting call.

Let me finish with a bit of history.  In 1933, because of parliamentary deadlock, political polarization, and a failed economy, German Conservative parties supported the appointment of a political novice to be head of government instead of forming a ruling coalition with the Left.  They preferred the fascists to the leftists.  The Conservatives thought they could control this political neophyte.  Sound familiar.  After assuming the Chancellorship, parliament passed a law giving the new Chancellor four years to rule by decree.  

That Chancellor was Adolph Hitler and it did not end well for the Germans. In a similar fashion, Congress is letting Trump rule by decree for the next four years, and you, the Supreme Court, are also permitting Trump to rule by decree.  I am not arguing that Trump and Hitler are moral equivalents, but Trump is the leader of an ultranationalist populist movement that is presently eroding the rule of law, like a melting ice sheet in Antarctica.  And, as the big, beautiful bill lays out in its 900 plus pages, he is not a true friend of the working classes.  Instead, transferring immense riches to the top 10 percent through regressive tax policies, building a police state, and further hollowing out the American dream for most working-class folks.   Do you think the $40 billion in new prisons will be just for migrants?

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen

The Second Amendment and the Seizure of California’s National Guard

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Initial proposition that would become the Second Amendment

Several weeks ago under the pretext of executive power and spurious claims of out of control wide-spread protests and violence, Trump seized California’s National Guard and turned it on the citizens of Los Angeles.  Protest is not insurrection or rebellion; it is the fight to assemble and protest government actions and policies. Local police authorities in Los Angels City and County have tens of thousands of officers and the capability and will to control any lawlessness by a minority of protestors. 

California sued. The initial ruling in federal court was that the activation of the California National Guard was illegal. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the ruling almost immediately and recently ruled that Trump may continue to to retain control of the California National Guard while the State’s lawsuit continues.  California did not make a second amendment argument, but I think it should have.  I argue that Trump’s seizure of the California National Guard is a fundamental violation of the Second Amendment’s original intent.  

The first federal Congress in 1789, fearing the possibility of one day having a despotic central government, wanted to amend the Constitution to restrict the federal government’s ability to strip state militias of the ability to ‘bear arms’ (among other things). That is essentially the states’ abilities to individually or collectively resist a repressive federal government.  California’s National Guard is just such a well-regulated militia.

By seizing the California National Guard and deploying it against the wishes of the governor, Trump took away California’s right to defend itself from a despotic and corrupt President and central government.  Adding insult to injury, active-duty Marines were also deployed to Los Angeles.

If you read the Congressional debates and follow the revisions surrounding the Second Amendment, the original intent of the Second Amendment was to prohibit the federal government from seizing or disbanding state militias.  Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has so mangled and distorted the amendment in the past decades that the second amendment’s original intent is unrecognizable. 

On June 8, 1789 — 236 years ago this month — James Madison introduced nine propositions or resolutions for amending the Constitution. From these propositions the House of Representatives would derive 17 amendments, of which, ten would eventually become what is known as the Bill of Rights. Way down the list, buried in proposition four, after statements about religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, the right to peaceable assembly and petitioning for redressing of grievances, Madison, proposed what would become the second amendment.

The Annals of Congress contains the record of the running debates surrounding the amendments to the Constitution and reflect contemporaneous conceptions of the meanings of these amendments, and how they changed over the debates. Madison, borrowing from the other state constitutions and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights, proposed the following language regarding the right to bear arms (House Records, pp. 451-452):

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison’s propositions did not gain much traction in Congress. Members of Congress were more concerned with the mechanics of setting up a functioning government. The debates preceding and surrounding the discussions on the proposed amendments centered on funding mechanisms and structure of the various executive departments being contemplated. Madison nonetheless persisted, and on July 21 requested further consideration of the amendments. After “desultory” conversation on the amendments, they were referred to a committee of eleven, which included Madison.

Just short of a month later, the committee of eleven finished their work on the proposed amendments and presented them to the House of Representatives on August 17. Madison’s language on bearing arms was revised and read:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms (House Records, p.778)

Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a veteran of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and who was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution at the end of the convention, led the debate regarding the amendment to bear arms. His remarks are crucial, I think to understanding, the intent of this amendment. He states:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed (p. 778).”

Not one person during the debate contradicted or challenged Gerry’s assertion, which seems to state that the ability to keep and bear arms referred to the people’s ability to form militias as a collective defense against a tyrannical central government. The remainder of the debate that day on this amendment surrounded primarily the question of religious scruples and service in the militia.

After more “desultory” (I love that word) conversation, 17 proposed amendments to the Constitution were sent to the Senate on August 24. The bearing arms amendment was number 5 and read after some minor tweaking (Senate record, pp. 63-64):

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

On September 4, the senate, whose records of debate are not as detailed as the House’s records of debate, showed that senators objected to a few of the amendments, but without comment as to why. “On the motion to adopt the fifth article of the amendments proposed by the House of Representatives, amended to read as followeth: ‘a well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed:’ It passed in the affirmative” (Senate Record, p. 71).

That senate version is today’s second amendment.

Trump’s actions run counter to the second amendment and are provocative and meant to inflame the citizens of Los Angeles and California.  He deliberately and recklessly tried to provoke a larger conflict and failed.  Now, instead of quelling protests, they are being used as an occupying army – with police powers – to accompany militarized ICE agents.  

It is not a good sign of democratic health when federal law enforcement agents dress and act like soldiers and the military act like police officers.  The stark historical difference between civilian police and the military are dangerously blurred and will eventually disappear.  For a president who increasingly sees military action as a solution to both domestic – blue states — and overseas issues we will witness an increase of National Guard activations and deployments to suppress domestic opposition soon I fear.  

If the Supreme Court sides with Trump, how will we, denizens of Virginia, defend itself from Trump’s provocations, corruption, and illegalities when Abigail Spanberger is elected governor this November and Virginia becomes a State with a blue governor?  

Tom’s Report on the State of America’s Democratic Health

As of May 16, 2025

Benchmarks of Democratic Backsliding and Erosion

The big issue this week was the arguments before the Supreme Court regarding the Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship.  The arguments were more about whether federal district judges can issue nationwide injunctions, or pauses, not so much the constitutionality of the executive order itself.  

The justices, from what I gathered, seemed conflicted about whether to limit federal judges ability to issue nationwide injunctions, especially if letting the law go into effect nationwide will cause great harm while the case winds its way through the courts.  I would think revoking birthright citizenship, or invoking the Alien Enemies Act, or suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus would fall into that category of immense national harm should the executive order or law be permitted to go forth while it is being fought over in the courts. 

It the Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions, it would have to devise a clear set of rules for when a judge may order a nationwide injunction or limit the injunction to their district.  I don’t see that happening, if they do, they are crazier than I thought.  Or worse yet, rule that federal district court rulings are limited to the district in which the court resides.  There are 94 federal court districts, chaos would ensue.  

If the Court eliminates nationwide injunctions outright while the constitutionality of the law is being challenged, that would trigger the very real possibility that half the country will have one set of constitutional rights while the other half would have a different set of constitutional rights. For example, if Trump suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus, five or six district judges may impose an injunction in their districts, but a district in Texas where an immigrant detention facility is located, may not see the suspension of the Writ as unconstitutional.  That would then permit hundreds if not thousands of deportations without due process. The harm would be immense.

In another important ruling, the Supreme Court did extend a block on deporting migrants from Texas using the Alien Enemies Act today (May 16).  Sending the case back to a lower court for additional litigation.

Republicans should be wary of Trump getting his way on this issue of nationwide injunctions and executive orders.  The next Democratic president could declare that the second amendment does not protect the manufacture or possession of AR-15 or similar type weapons.  The president could use an executive order to prohibit the possession, manufacture, sale, and transportation of these items across state lines.  

Republicans are painting themselves into a very small separation of powers corner.  Mitch McConnel basically shanked the Senate years ago.  Mike Johnson turned the House of Representatives into a spittoon full of, you know spit.  Chief Justice John Roberts, just can’t get his head out of his butt, all but declaring Trump King last term. Although, I must say, after creating this Frankenstein presidency, he is doing his best to cage the beast.

Republicans act as if the Democrats will be forever in the wilderness, a token political party for show during elections, but powerless.  If that was their goal, we shall see how they react to losing in the mid-terms and in 2028  Will they accept the outcome(s)?  And once the Democrats return to power, how can they ever, ever, claim overreach?

Amazingly, because of court action and popular backlash to the excesses of the Trump White House by DOGE — and don’t forget the tariff mess — the guard rails are bending, but still in place in some places.  Where the guardrails are missing is Congress.  They are not checking the accumulation of congressionally enumerated powers into the executive branch and seem not to have any interest in checking his power, mostly out of fear I suspect. Then again, some just that holy grail, $5 trillion in tax cuts. most of which will go to the top 1 percent (that is them and their millionaire class)

Some examples of Congressional nonfeasance revolve around Trump’s personal corruption and  profiteering from office .  For instance his ongoing attempt to accept a $400 million 747 from the Emir of Qatar for use as Air Force 1, and it being ‘decommissioned’ and transferred to his presidential library foundation following his presidency; his sale contest of  $Trump (a crypto currency) for White House tour (access?); pocketing tens of millions of dollars in crypto fees through the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, are all examples of Republicans in Congress looking the other way while Trump engages in what appears to be unconstitutional and corrupt practices.

While there have been some tactical and strategic setbacks for Trump, as the initial 100 days passes into the next 60 days, we are not out of harms way. He will become more dangerous. And, like a trapped and cornered animal, will attack, hard and fierce.  Hang on, it will be like holding on to the ears of an angry wolf.

For a cumulative list of backsliding and erosion of our democracy, please click ‘benchmarks’ or menu above. Updates are in bold.