Surely, it struck some people as overly alarmist when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on national TV that “we may not have an election in 2028.” But President Trump has done nothing to put down that dystopian nightmare.
To the contrary, he stoked it when he addressed an unprecedented command audience of generals and admirals at the Quantico, Va., Marine base Tuesday.
He spoke of using our streets as “training grounds for the military” and ranted about “a war from within.” He singled out four Democratic-run cities and said “We’re going to straighten them out, one by one.”
Training ground for what? Another Boston Massacre or Kent State?
Those weren’t the words of a president who respects any limits on his power or the proper role of the U.S. military.
Rambling and incoherent
Considering that Trump already attempted to overturn the 2020 election and continues to flout the Constitution, that warning from California doesn’t sound so hyperbolic.
Trump’s rambling and occasionally incoherent speech, laced with partisan politics, childish boasting, personal spite and at least 12 false claims — including the big lie that he won the 2020 election — was inappropriate for a nonpartisan, military audience in every possible respect.
He even complained because the officers were listening in respectful silence rather than whooping and clapping like at his MAGA rallies.
Trump’s speech came amid what the New York Times Editorial Board aptly called “a dark new stage” in his effort “to turn federal law enforcement into a personal tool of oppression and vengeance.”
The Times editorial addressed the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, who has been on Trump’s vengeance list ever since he refused in 2017 to promise personal loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.
Dismiss Comey case
The Comey indictment is so riddled with misconduct by the president and by his hastily selected and unqualified interim U.S. attorney that it should be dismissed without trial, like Daniel Ellsberg’s in the Pentagon Papers leaking case in 1973.
The judge tossed Ellsberg’s indictment because President Nixon ordered his “plumbers” to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to look for compromising information. Trump personally ordering up dubious charges against Comey is clearly misconduct as well.
Once again, federal judges have become the first line of defense against a runaway executive’s assaults on the Constitution. Unlike Watergate, unfortunately, Congress is AWOL this time.
It’s the nation’s profound ill fortune that this power-mad president also finds sympathetic enablers at the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts has been devoted to an all-powerful “unitary executive,” since he worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
Court-ordered carte blanche
Having given Trump carte blanche to break laws under the cover of official duties, the Roberts clique is abusing the court’s emergency docket to amplify the president’s powers and shrink those of Congress.
Recent “temporary” decisions to let him fire a federal trade commissioner and withhold billions in spending authorized by Congress foretell bad outcomes when the court finally decides those issues on the merits. They also augur poorly for the independence of the Federal Reserve, where a Trump victory would be an economic disaster.
In trial courts, where evidence is heard and initial decisions issued, district judges delivered two beautiful verdicts for the American people and their Constitution in the same week Trump was acting out at Quantico.
In Boston, Senior U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, scathingly rebuked Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for cancelling visas and deporting foreign students over pro-Palestinian expressions.
“If ‘terrorist’ is interpreted to mean ‘pro-Palestine’ or ‘anti-Israel,’ and ‘support’ encompasses pure political speech, then core free speech rights have been imperiled,” he wrote in a 161-page opinion.
Thumbing their noses
He punctuated the opinion with remarks about Trump himself: “The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies — all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act.”
Then, in Washington, Senior Judge Royce Lamberth, another Reagan appointee, roasted the administration for 532 layoffs at the Voice of America — which would effectively shut it down — and ordered employees to be reinstated. He threatened Kari Lake, Trump’s global media chief, with contempt of court for ignoring a previous order to keep VOA on the air.
“The defendants thumb their noses at Congress’ commands and give responses that are dripping with indifference to their statutory obligations,” Lamberth wrote.
The Constitution intends three equal branches of government in a system of checks and balances that protects the liberties of the people. But that’s only as effective as the devotion of the presidents, Congress members and judges sworn to uphold that Constitution.
Trump treats it with contempt, not respect. The Republican Congress grovels. The Supreme Court indulges him to an ominous extent.
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties,” James Madison wrote in 1785, four years before he crafted what we call the Bill of Rights.
We are far past the time of first experiments under Trump. Every thinking American ought to be alarmed.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
