“Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal,”
President Trump’s Executive Order to unilaterally
repeal energy and environmental regulations
Donald Trump’s insatiable thirst for and expansive interpretation of presidential power has been the defining characteristic since his inauguration. His issuances of daily, often legally-questionably, Executive Orders and Actions have been intended to rescind many laws and regulations he dislikes while mandating new federal policies he supports, absent and circumventing Congress’s legislative involvement as a co-equal branch of government.
Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s unprecedented and ill-advised ruling on presidential immunity, America’s autocrat president began a crusade to single-handedly reshape our society in a way unimaginable to our nation’s founders!
The president has allowed an unelected and unaccountable Elon Musk and his DOGE posse of unqualified and unvetted “investigators” to dictate summary terminations of thousands of dedicated governmental employees and curtail domestic and foreign aid programs despite failing to have uncovered any material “waste, fraud or abuse.” More dangerous has been their unfettered access to legally-protected personal data on American citizens and sensitive classified information.
Trump has also engaged in a dangerous and unconstitutional game of chicken with the Judiciary, openly defying court decisions and judicial orders with which he disagrees.
He has unleashed a Gestapo-style campaign to round-up, incarcerate and deport to El Salvador’s notorious TCC prison immigrants deemed “gang-bangers” without providing them their due process rights, access to an attorney or other legal-mandated or Constitutional protections. Despite his Administration admitting mistakes were made, the president ignores judicial orders to facilitate the return of those potentially-innocent individuals to American soil … which could likely be accomplished by simply suspending all trade and US aid to El Salvador. More alarmingly, Trump recently suggested sending some convicted American citizens to El Salvador despite their Eight Amendment protections.
As with his campaign rhetoric which many voters ignored, not taking the president’s threats seriously could be a tragic mistake!
Other legal immigrants are similarly being snatched off the street for deportation, absence any due process, based solely on their vocal (free speech) support for displaced Palestinians in Gaza absent any evidence they are antisemitic, support Hamas or represent a national security threat.
While Trump complained, again without evidence, his predecessor “weaponized” the Justice Department, the president has taken “weaponization” to new heights, appointing a spineless Trump-loyalist as the nation’s Attorney General who insists government lawyers “zealously advance, protect, and defend their client’s interests,” specifically referring to Trump’s personal interests, rather than those of the America people, the rule of law and the Constitution which they should be vigorously defending.
The president’s campaign to censor and restrict presidential press access to organizations challenging Trump’s statements or defying his renaming the Gulf of Mexico; negatively impact the client bases of law firms which have represented clients opposed to Trump’s policies; withhold Congressionally-authorized funding and threatening to end the tax-free status of colleges, universities and even K-12 public schools; and terminate government contracts of private sector employers if those entities refuse to conform to his personal demands, political philosophy and ultra-conservative social agendas (thus dismissing their “freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”) seems to take on the appearance of political extortion.
The first 100 days of Trump’s second term has been far more characteristic of tactics used by 20th and 21st century dictators and autocrats than the ideals and aspirations of our nation’s framers or those of any of his White House predecessors.
Robert Hutchins, a 20th century American educational philosopher and former Yale’s Law School Dean soberly noted, “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
Thankfully, Harvard University, the Associated Press, a few courageous law firms and many federal judges have refused to bend under Trumps assaults. But, to preserve our 238-year-old experiment in representative democracy, it will take a great deal more, including courage and commitments from large numbers of average Americans spanning the political spectrum.
What type of America will our children and grandchildren inherit?
