Here is a list of damage Trump is doing to the rule of law in America by offending specific provisions in the Constitution.
Trump has challenged the habeas corpus provision granted to all residing within the boundaries of the United States, found in Article I, Section 9. All those who felt they were falsely imprisoned used to be able to get out of jail and go before a judge, but no longer. Now would-be immigrants are treated to a different America than our ancestors were.
The President is also regularly violating the pardon power in Article II, Section 2. The Founders intended for the President to use this power to further justice, not to undermine justice by pardoning friends, political loyalists, donors, evil genius white collar criminals, etc. Is Diddy next?
The 47th president is trying with all his might to make the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship clause a vestige of the past in America. With friends in high places, he may succeed.
Trump is undermining the treaty language found in Article II, Section 2, which empowers the Senate to give consent to tentative international deals made by the White House. He unilaterally withdrew from the World Health Organization and subverted our nation’s commitment to the Climate Accords, skipping Senate approval altogether.
The Constitution in Article I, Section 8, says that Congress “makes all laws. Starting January 2024, the President makes virtually all laws in the United States, as his hundreds of Executive Orders attest.
In the same section, the Constitution says Congress has the power to raise revenue by passing tax legislation. Now Trump personally creates income tax legislation and tariff tax legislation. The first he shoves down the Congress’ throat, and the second he implements on his own, while the Congress sits around with its legs crossed and its mouth shut.
The chief exec has also usurped the appropriations power of Article I, Section 9. This is the power to decide where revenue is going to be spent. Trump “impounds” Congressionally authorized spending and puts it where he wants. For example, he built a southern border wall with money earmarked for other programs. He ends funding of the USAID agency and then cruelly stands by and watches as thousands of Africans die without their anti-viral drugs. He then ravages a good chunk of hard-won federal government programming along with its workforce in order to fund his tax cuts for the rich.
The president, with the help of his buddies in the Supreme Court, has ended the prohibition on “titles of nobility” found in Article I, Section 9. He has given himself special privileges above all others, like immunity for misdeeds for the first time in history.
The chief executive has also given himself the power to ignore the emoluments clause of the Constitution in Article I, Section 9, which says a President cannot accept bribe-like gifts or use his office to make himself rich. Airplanes, gold ornaments for the mantle, watches, crypto millions, not a problem.
Who can forget the undermining of the electoral college provision of the Constitution found in Article II, Section 1? Trump didn’t like the electors that were selected by the people, so he jury-rigged up his own slates of electors devoted to him.
How about the free speech and press provision in the First Amendment of the Constitution? Trump has kicked reporters out of white House briefings and Pentagon briefings. He is suing news media outlets because he doesn’t like their speech patterns. He has reshaped liberal papers like the LA Times and the Washington Post into outlets he likes a little better.
Trump shows signs of personally subverting Congress’ Article I, Section 8 exclusive war power more brazenly than any President before him by staging a military parade in his honor, greenlighting Netanyahu’s dogs of war in the Middle East, and by regularly announcing personal ultimatums on hot spots the world over. Is Mexico set to be Trump’s first official Presidential war? He wants to root out cartels there like Israel is rooting out Hamas, by total annihilation.
Finally, Trump has usurped the law found in Article V that says there must be a convention of the states to change the form of government. Trump changes the form of government after coffee every morning just by looking in the mirror while shouting out orders to his legal staff.
This is just a beginning list folks, one that any American who knows how to read can produce. Constitutional scholars should be making a longer list, adding other depredations he has originated lately and will be originating down the road.
(1) comment
“ Trump shows signs of personally subverting Congress’ Article I, Section 8 exclusive war power more brazenly than any President before him by staging a military parade in his honor,” - wrong! At best you could have said this might become maybe a capricious use of his powers as Commander-in-Chief but there is no patent illegality. As for many of your other allegations regarding his uses of Executive Orders and the pardoning power these are certainly not different from similar uses of these powers by the Biden administration with the exception that at least we know Trump’s signatures are his own (he even displays his signatures) whereas several if not most of Biden’s were by use of an auto-pen by persons unknown and therefore of truly dubious legality. For your screed to have any credibility you should show equal concern for supposed unconstitutional activities under the previous sock-puppet administration. Your protests are clearly those of a partisan hack.
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