The snarling visage of Donald Trump dominates TV screens these days, slandering Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota — accusing her of faking an attack at a town meeting — and claiming before Davos luminaries that the 2020 election was “rigged.” “Alternative facts” are overworked in our threatened Republic, and Trump has plastered his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and other projects.
He has cowed great American institutions. Universities have caved to the man who defrauded enrollees at Trump University. They have submitted to interference with curricula, enrollment standards, and the firing of the president of the University of Virginia. The legacy of Thomas Jefferson has been trashed.
Elite law firms, targeted by Trump, have changed hiring practices and agreed to pro bono work for Trump causes. Seattle-based Perkins Coie, to its credit, has held out. Trump has also cowed the nation’s mainstream media. By bringing defamation lawsuits, he has shaken down Paramount, owner of CBS, for $16 million — over the editing of a 2024 campaign interview with Kamala Harris — and ABC for $15 million.
The U.S. Supreme Court has permitted Trump to fire the chairs and members of commissions crafted by Congress to be independent. We have been subjected to “The Apprentice” on a national scale with FBI agents fired for daring to investigate the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The Supreme Court holds one openly corrupt justice — Clarence Thomas, buddy of billionaires with interests in cases pending before the court — plus a smirking Samuel Alito, celebrating his drafting of the decision overturning Roe v Wade. The corruption of this new Gilded Age vastly exceeds its 19th century equivalent — witness Qatar’s “gift” of a lavishly adorned Boeing 747 as our president’s new mode of transportation .
But a blowback has begun. The Biden Administration nominated and confirmed 235 members of the federal judiciary, including a Supreme Court justice and 45 appellate judges. They have comprised a bulwark against Trumpism and MAGA extremism.
For example, a judge has ordered the National Guard out of Chicago. Another has found Trump’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from law enforcement unless authorized by Congress.
Already this week, federal judges have ruled against Trump’s shutdown of three major East Coast wind-power projects, one of them 95 percent complete, supposedly on grounds of “national security.” Trump has a particular antipathy to wind energy.
A pair of cases before the Supreme Court will test the limits. Only Trump and the Heritage Foundation would seek repeal of a constitutional amendment. In one of his first executive orders, the POTUS ended birthright citizenship, directly contravening the 14th Amendment. He has also set out to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook on trumped-up charges. Hostile questioning by the Supremes during oral arguments over Trump’s tariff-setting overreach would indicate a verdict against the administration coming, with Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as swing votes.
In a recent two-hour interview with The New York Times, which he has sued for at least $15 billion, Trump showed disdain for the Constitution and belief he can do anything he wants. Influential aide Stephen Miller has already charted a path to authoritarian rule.
Such is the climate in the U.S. Capitol. The reign of vengeance, and Trump’s excesses will only be broken, bottom up, by voters, terrified and warned by the killings in Minneapolis. The lower federal courts are hopefully providing a holding action. “We the people” must do the rest. The country will have to regain its spines to make it happen.
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
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