Kamala Harris has been vindicated.
After her loss last November, many people claimed that her campaign was too focused on the danger to our democracy that Trump posed instead of doing more to reassure voters that if elected she'd work to bring down the price of groceries and inflation in general.
Now, two and a half weeks into the chaos that the Trump administration has produced, it's clear that if anything, Harris should have uttered her warnings about how Trump would subvert our democracy in a louder voice.
For every day it becomes more obvious that while Trump's first term in office was marked by his failure to abide by the unwritten norms that all preceding presidents have followed, whether Republican or Democrat, his second term will be marked by a failure to abide by written laws -- a much more serious offense.
This strikes at the heart of our democracy.
The American Constitution was designed by our founding fathers to spread power among three co-equal branches of government: the legislative branch, Congress; the executive branch, led by the President; the judicial branch, led by the Supreme Court.
But Trump and his billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, currently are acting to defund and dissolve agencies that were established by Congress, along with refusing to spend money on programs authorized by Congress.
A federal law prevents presidents from impounding funds appropriated by Congress unless the legislative branch agrees to this. Disturbingly, that hasn't stopped Trump and his co-president, Musk, from taking steps to do away with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The richest man in the world and the President of the United States sent a message over the weekend to USAID, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance depended on for survival by millions of the world’s poorest people: “Time to die.”
Two weeks into Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the Washington headquarters of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) shuttered its doors on Monday, making it the latest, most visible casualty in the new administration’s sweeping dismantling of America’s foreign aid apparatus.
Hours later, USAID employees couldn’t tell if their agency still existed. Its website went dark, social media accounts vanished, and staff found themselves locked out of email servers. Overnight, photos documenting decades of aid work and agency logos vanished from the Washington office’s walls.
The unravelling of the agency, which employs over 10,000 people who assist tens of millions worldwide every year, began last week with sweeping personnel cuts: half its global health staff dismissed, 60% of its humanitarian assistance bureau eliminated, and 500 employees terminated, including at least 56 senior officials.
By Saturday night, two top security officials were placed on administrative leave for refusing to grant billionaire Elon Musk’s personnel access to classified agency systems.
The assault further escalated as Musk announced he had secured the president’s support to abolish USAID entirely after over six decades of operation.
“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said. “USAID is a criminal organization. It’s time for it to die.”
This is blatantly illegal. Only Congress can abolish USAID or revoke its funding. Sadly, it's only one of many examples of how Trump and his cronies are ignoring the law. Their scheme appears to be unfolding along this line:
(1) Break the law.
(2) Lawsuits are filed against the Trump administration.
(3) Keep on breaking the law.
(4) Appeal adverse court rulings.
(5) Keep on breaking the law.
(6) The Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration.
(7) Keep on breaking the law.
There's a lot not to like here.
A president is expected to follow the law to the best of his abilities. That's the oath Trump took on inauguration day, to uphold the Constitution and the laws that flow from the Constitution. But Trump is acting like an authoritarian, not a president.
I expect that even if courts issue injunctions against seemingly illegal actions of the Trump administration, he will ignore those rulings, claiming that the Constitution allows a president virtually unlimited power.
By the time a case reaches the Supreme Court, which could take years, Trump will have succeeded in fashioning the federal government into his twisted anti-democracy MAGA image. And even if the Supreme Court finds that his actions are unconstitutional, my bet is that Trump will ignore that ruling also.
This is how a democracy becomes an autocracy. A duly elected leader uses his position to dismantle the democracy that put him in power. This is possible in the United States today because the Republican Party has decided that kneeling before the altar of Trump is preferable to upholding the Constitution.
Scary. Super scary.
I've been avidly following politics ever since John Kennedy was president. Since, we've had some good presidents and some bad presidents. But none have tried to accomplish what Trump is doing: assert presidential power in a crude, heartless, dangerous way that threatens the rule of law that is the foundation of our democracy.
My hope is that when the political shit really hits the fan, as the saying goes, the American people will rise up, take to the streets, and speak with a loud unified voice that even Trump will have to pay attention to: We're mad as hell and we're not taking this anymore.
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