Donald Trump is the kind of president the Constitution was written to protect us from, only it’s not working.
Remember all that stuff you learned in high school about the three co-equal branches of government? The founders were said to have established the executive, the congress, and the judiciary and imbued them with equal powers so that each would serve as a “check and balance” on the other.
The executive was given the power to propose laws, and once passed, to execute them faithfully; to command the armies and navies to provide for defense of the nation; to conduct the country’s business with foreign nations through diplomacy and trade; and to administer the federal government.
The congress was given the so-called “power of the purse,” the power to levy taxes and to fund or fail to fund the actions of the executive and the judiciary; to provide oversight on the executive branch’s actions; to pass laws and if deemed necessary, to override a president’s veto in order to force those laws into existence; and to declare war.
The judiciary was given the power to interpret laws passed by the congress to insure they conform to the strictures of the Constitution; to punish infractions against the law and impose sentence; to resolve cases which arise between the states and which arise out of foreign treaties; and to enforce decisions through criminal and civil contempt powers.
Unwritten in the Constitution is what you might call a “good faith” clause. This is because there was an assumption on the part of the founders that the powers granted to the president, congress, and courts would be carried out with a modicum of respect for the law and for the other branches of government.
Whatever good faith we ever had in this nation is gone. What has replaced it is a form of open warfare against the traditions and norms of government we’ve had in the past, and a contempt for the rule of law. This war is being led by Donald Trump and the Trump Republican party, and it has produced a form of fascism we’ve never seen before in this country.
This is most evident in the behavior of the Republican Party with respect to laws that have been passed by the congress and the president when they are controlled by the other party. Think back a few decades. There was a time within my memory when major legislation was passed and signed into law, and major court decisions were made, and those laws and Supreme Court decisions were recognized and treated with respect and forbearance. Think of the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960’s. These laws were controversial and difficult to pass, but once passed, war was not immediately declared against them, and attempts were not made to immediately repeal or overturn them.
Contrast that to the passage of the Affordable Care Act and what happened afterwards. A legal assault was undertaken against the law in the courts, leading to its weakening with a Supreme Court decision which made the Medicaid provision in the law optional for the states, thus stripping the law of much of its efficiency and power. Then the Republican Party made repealing the Affordable Care Act its primary reason for being. According to Newsweek, after Republicans took control of the House, they voted 54 times to fully repeal the act, and voted nearly 20 times more to strip the act of its powers in other ways.
Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders were reported to have met for dinner on the night of Obama’s first inauguration where they hatched a plan to make it as difficult as possible for the new president to sign legislation into law or make appointments to the courts, including the Supreme Court. This effort went on for eight years and culminated in the denial of even a hearing to Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.
It took Republicans longer to deal a significant blow to the Voting Rights Act, but finally in 2013 in Shelby County v Holder, they stripped the act of its primary enforcement power by eliminating “pre-clearance” by the Department of Justice of voting laws in the south. Almost immediately, multiple southern states which had been under Department of Justice supervision passed voter ID requirements and other laws making it more difficult to vote. And now the Jeff Sessions DOJ has re-focused its voting rights division to emphasize prosecution of voting “fraud,” which is largely a myth.
With the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, they’ve got Roe v Wade firmly in their sights. They’ve been nibbling away at the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, trying to establish a “right” to discriminate on religious grounds against LGBT Americans. You have to ask yourself the question, what’s next? Brown v Board of Education? Are they going to look for a “right” to refuse service to African Americans or other minorities on religious grounds? Is the assault on affirmative action going to morph into an assault on the idea of integration itself? If I were to place a bet today, I’d bet Yes. And they’re stacking the federal courts from top to bottom with judges that will find reasons to rule the way they want them to.
This has led us to the point where we now have a Republican side of the Supreme Court and a Democratic side. The NRA recently announced they will spend $1 million in support of Trump’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, as if they were engaged in a political campaign to “elect” the Republican nominee.
Donald Trump and the Trump Republican Party have shown they want to turn the courts into a rubber stamp for the right-wing dream machine that has brought us weakened abortion, civil rights and voting rights laws. But it’s the behavior of the Republican-led congress that has really shown what they think of “co-equal” branches of government.
The Republican dominated congress has completely abdicated its duty of oversight on the executive branch. The House Oversight Committee took two years, held 33 hearings and spent $7 million trying to pin the blame for Benghazi on Hillary Clinton. The Russian government undertook an all-out assault on the presidential election of 2016 and plans to do the same thing on the midterms this year. What has the Republican House done? Two words: Devin Nunes.
Republicans in the congress are so afraid of the wrath of the Trump “base,” they’re giving him a pass on practically everything. They’re letting Trump use spurious “national security” grounds to impose tariffs on imports from such hostile nations as Canada and Mexico. Trump’s cabinet is stuffed with scoundrels like Scott Pruitt and Tom Price and Wilbur Ross and Ryan Zinke. Have they held a single hearing on the rampant corruption and outright illegality in Trump’s administration? Has a single Republican in congress even made a peep criticizing Trump’s cabinet of thugs and thieves?
The Senate is rubber-stamping Trump’s appointments so fast they’re running out of ink. Several of his nominees to the federal bench haven’t tried a single case as a lawyer or been able to answer even rudimentary questions about court procedures, and still they’ve been made judges.
Trump himself seems to look at helming the executive branch as an opportunity to enrich himself and play golf. He came into the presidency and immediately ignored the rules and strictures adhered to by previous presidents. Instead of putting his holdings into a blind trust, he maintained his ownership of his business and turned its management over to his sons, Eric and Don Jr. He’s profiting handsomely from his ownership of the Trump International Hotel in Washington and other properties, flaunting the emoluments clause of the Constitution. His sons’ trips overseas on business are supplemented by hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
According to USA Today, the Secret Service spent $230,000 in a single month in 2017 on foreign trips by Trump’s sons doing family business.
