President Trump is aggressively rolling over the government, closing agencies and firing government workers, as well as giving his billionaire buddy the green light to go through personal files of American citizens, violating all kind of rules and laws. Hal Ginsberg and I discuss the first crazy weeks of this administration on my weekly appearance on Hal’s YouTube videocast Halitics. We discuss immigration, Guantanamo, Gaza, nuclear weapons and more……
A very serious constitutional crisis is unfolding. Can the Trump/Musk dictatorship be stopped? Here’s what the New York Times editorial board is thinking…..
The U.S. Constitution established three branches of government, designed to balance power — and serve as checks on one another. That constitutional order suddenly appears more vulnerable than it has in generations. President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses. It’s worth remembering why undoing this system of governance would be so dangerous to American democracy and why it’s vital that Congress, the courts and the public resist such an outcome.
Among legal scholars, the term “constitutional crisis” usually refers to a conflict among the branches of government that cannot be resolved through the rules set out in the Constitution and the system of checks and balances at its heart.
Say, a president who openly disregards the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit and asserts a right to remain in office indefinitely.
But there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, in February 2025, only weeks into President Trump’s second term, he and his top associates are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War.
A partial list would include flouting the express requirements of multiple federal laws, as though Congress were an advisory board and not a coequal branch of government. It would include feeding entire agencies into the “wood chipper” (their words), an intentionally gory metaphor for the firing of thousands of civil servants without the legally mandated congressional approval. It would include giving an unelected “special government employee” access to the private financial information of millions of Americans, in violation of the law. And it would include issuing an executive order that purports to erase one of the foundational provisions of the Constitution on Mr. Trump’s say-so.
There is also reason to fear that powers that solely rest with the president, and therefore don’t raise direct constitutional concerns, are being abused in ways that weaken the constitutional order. His mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, for instance, is technically legal, but it both celebrates and gives license to anyone who wishes to engage in violence to keep Mr. Trump in power.
Any one of these acts sets off major alarms. Taken as a whole, they are a frontal assault on the laws and norms that underpin American government — by the very people who are meant to execute the law.
The most useful way to answer that question is to focus less on discrete events and more on the process, in which one branch pushes the limits of its authority and then the others push back. When those in power understand that their first obligation is to the Constitution and the American people, this process can be normal, even healthy.
When they don’t — well, that’s what we are watching play out.
Voters gave Mr. Trump a Republican-controlled Congress, and those lawmakers are within their right to try to pass the president’s agenda through the legislative process. That doesn’t relieve either chamber of its constitutional responsibility to the American people to serve as a check on the power of the president.
With virtually no exception, Republican leaders in Congress have made clear through their inaction that as long as they and Mr. Trump hold power — until January 2027, at least — they will stay out of his way. One reason, however, that Mr. Trump is using executive orders so often is that many of his plans would find resistance from Congress because of the Republicans’ slim majorities and the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
While it may seem that the Republican leaders in Congress are free to abdicate their power to the president if they choose, that is not the case. As the sole branch granted lawmaking authority, they can repeal a law only by passing another one — not by failing to complain when a president chooses not to follow the ones he doesn’t like. That ensures that every law passed has the support of a majority of members elected to represent this diverse, divided country.
The United States Agency for International Development, for example, is funded through the congressional appropriations process. Would the current Congress vote to cut that funding? Perhaps. But at the very least, the House speaker and Senate majority leader should be putting the question up for a vote.
And Congress plays another important role: When the president or his administration is believed to have broken the law, it’s up to Congress to investigate and, when appropriate, use its censure powers. There is no sign that lawmakers plan to hold Mr. Trump accountable in this manner.
The willingness of Republican congressional leadership to watch passively as its own rights and responsibilities as a coequal branch of government are undermined leaves only one other branch actively checking the excesses of this overreaching presidency: the federal courts, where nearly all intragovernmental disputes eventually wind up.
However it may play out, the refusal to obey a Supreme Court ruling — from which there is no appeal — would be the moment that America’s constitutional order completely fails. That is a clear red line separating countries that operate under the rule of law from those that do not. If he crosses it, Mr. Trump will have created the precise scenario the nation’s founders fought a war and established an entirely new government to avoid. And if that happens, no part of society can remain silent.
There is disagreement among even legal scholars about whether the country is all the way to a constitutional crisis yet. Regardless, the statements from the White House and the unwillingness of Republican leaders in Congress to even consider acting as a check should be taken as a flashing warning sign. If we have learned anything from the past decade of living with Donald Trump, it’s that when he tells you about what he will do with power, believe him.
Who is in charge of the country? The people or the Trump/Musk regime ? I go on Hal Ginsberg‘s YouTube videocast Halitics an make the case that we are undergoing an illegal fascist-style coup that is getting worse by the hour? Will Trump and Musk even recognize the validity of court decisions? Hal is a bit more sanguine but is also worried.
So, JD Vance is now saying that he and Trump don’t have to obey federal judges, tweeting, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” This is how autocrats run things; it’s an extraordinarily dangerous moment.
It was Tuesday, July 17, 1787 and the men writing the Constitution had convened in Philadelphia to debate the separation of powers between the Congress, the presidency, and the courts. They drew their inspiration for that day from French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, whose 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws had taken the New World and the Framers of the Constitution by storm.
In it, Montesquieu pointed out the absolute necessity of having three relatively co-equal branches of government, each with separate authorities, to prevent any one branch from seizing too much power and ending a nation’s democracy. In The Spirit of Laws, he laid it out unambiguously:
“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. … Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.”
As the topic of the separation of powers was being debated at the Constitutional Convention that day twenty-nine years after Montesquieu’s book had been published, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison rose to address the delegates:
“If it be essential to the preservation of liberty that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers be separate, it is essential to a maintenance of the separation, that they should be independent of each other. …
“In like manner, a dependence of the executive [president] on the legislature would render it the executor as well as the maker of laws; and then, according to the observation of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner.
“He [Montesquieu] conceived it to be absolutely necessary to a well-constituted-republic, that the two first should be kept distinct and independent of each other … for guarding against a dangerous union of the legislative and executive departments.”
If the president were ever to dictate all terms to the Congress, which then became a compliant rubber-stamp regardless of how excessive or even illegal the president’s actions became, that, Madison said, “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
We’re there now.
In simplified form, the system Madison and his compatriots came up with that summer gave the power to create and fund government agencies (including the federal court system) to Congress (Article I), the first among equals.
The responsibility of the president was to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution); in other words, to manage the institutions of government envisioned, authorized, and funded by Congress.
And the role of the Article III Courts was to make sure neither overstepped their authority, and independently arbitrate disputes between them. Their decisions must be final for the system to work.
However, as a result of a 44-year-long effort by morbidly rich American oligarchs to corrupt our government to their own gain (the so-called Reagan Revolution, Bush, Trump, 1500 radio stations, three television networks, multiple newspapers and other publications, over 200 television stations, hundreds of billions spent to purchase and then elect politicians), all of this American democracy and government— after 240 years — is finally on the verge of collapsing and being replaced by something very much like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The GOP-controlled Congress has, in both houses, become a pathetic rubber-stamp for whatever billionaires, Trump, Musk, and industries like fossil fuels, crypto/tech, and banks want.
The president is nakedly breaking laws and daring both Congress and the courts to do anything about it.
And now JD Vance claims Trump can do whatever he wants and ignore the courts. (Only federal marshals can enforce federal court orders, but they work for Pam Bondi and Donald Trump.)
That is the very definition of a constitutional crisis.
As a result, every Republican and most Democrats are terrified of Elon Musk or some other billionaire destroying them in the next primary election. The result has been legislative gridlock, a paralysis of the legislative branch.
Going a step farther, Trump has authorized a drug-abusing, Putin-conversing, government-contracting billionaire — his single largest donor who probably was responsible for him becoming president — to access the private information of every American citizen and corporation, dismantle entire agencies created and funded by Congress, and stop multiple investigations into his own business practices.
This is more correctly defined as a war against America and our system of government than mere politics.
A war that must be absolutely delighting America’s enemies, particularly Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi. Especially now that Musk is calling for the shutdown of the Voice of America that both Putin and Xi hate as much as they both hated USAID.
But it even goes beyond that. Trump and Musk are rapidly moving America — with their attacks on the press, voting, and truth itself — toward the kind of authoritarian police state that several of the men Trump appears to love have established.
Further defying the Constitution, Trump has empowered the richest man in the world to attack and possibly destroy multiple federal agencies that were, just coincidentally of course, investigating his businesses:
— The FAA’s Administrator had launched an investigation into SpaceX after a spectacular rocket explosion; he’s now been fired. — The Department of Justice was looking into possible violations of securities and other laws by Musk and Tesla; it’s probably safe to assume that investigation won’t go any farther. — The USAID Inspector General was investigating how Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals, purchased with USAID funds, were used in Ukraine’s war to defend itself from Russia. — The Department of Defense’s Inspector General opened a review in 2024 into alleged repeated failures by Musk and SpaceX to properly disclose their contact with foreign leaders; he’s now fired. — The USDA Inspector General’s office was investigating alleged animal abuse at Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company; he’s been fired. — The National Transportation Safety Board, overseen by the DOT, had several open probes into Tesla regarding its remote and self-driving vehicles; odds are they’ll be dropped if they haven’t been already. — The EPA had settled multiple lawsuits with Tesla in recent years over Clean Air Act and hazardous waste law violations; now that the EPA is being gutted there probably won’t be any more. — The National Labor Relations Board, overseen by the Department of Labor, had 17 open investigations against Tesla and SpaceX for alleged unfair labor practices, safety violations, and discriminatory work practices that are probably now moot. — The FCC was carrying out investigations and had issued court orders related to Musk’s businesses. — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was overseeing some of Musk’s companies and had a consent decree in place. — Additionally, the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security launched reviews in November 2024 regarding Musk and SpaceX’s compliance with federal reporting requirements.
Musk’s $277 million investment to get Trump elected — legalized by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — has, so far, paid off well.
Welcome to Madison’s “very definition of tyranny.”
Now that Republicans control Congress and have surrendered their authority to Trump, the last bulwark against the president converting himself into the sort of monarch we fought the Revolutionary War against is the Supreme Court, which will probably begin weighing in over the next few weeks.
And, in the face of this, the vice president is arguing that he and the president should feel free to ignore court orders.
This attack on our republic represents the most dangerous moment America has experienced since the Civil War.
Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress are entirely capable of ignoring public opinion: It’s vital we all reach out to our elected officials (particularly Republicans) to demand they reclaim their rightful role in our republic and speak out against this illegal, unconstitutional power grab.
It’s also crucial to make our opinions known in every way and every venue possible.
If America is to retain any fidelity whatsoever to our Constitution that was written and survived more than two centuries’ investment of blood and treasure, it’s time to raise absolute holy hell.
There is one thread that ties together Trump’s destruction of American government agencies, his offer to take the Gaza crisis off Israel’s hands and dump it on our military, and senators’ and representatives’ failure to challenge him: This is how kingdoms operate. Rule by decree.
It proves that we’re asking the wrong question.
Plug “Can American democracy survive Trump?” into a search engine and you’ll find thousands of websites, blogs, articles, and podcasts devoted to that one, single question.
But American democracy was kneecapped by five Republicans on the Supreme Court years ago when they ruled that money was the same thing as “free speech”; that corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of [Human] Rights; and that political operatives can engage in virtually unlimited purges of voting rolls, accompanied by racial- and gender-targeted laws to make it harder to vote.
The correct question is: “Can the American system — now that it’s become flooded with dark money and the ‘right to vote’ has become a mere privilege in Red states — ever again represent the interests of average citizens? Can we ever return to democracy?”
In an open call on X yesterday with Republican Senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, apartheid billionaire Elon Musk — whose father says he was chauffeured to school in white-run South Africa in a Rolls Royce — lit into the regulations that created and protect the American middle class and our democracy:
“Regulations, basically, should be default gone. Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
“These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So, we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done. … If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”
Both capitalism and democracy could be likened to a game — say, football — ideally played to benefit the largest number of people by creating and guaranteeing “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But imagine if the NFL were to suspend their regulations just before this Sunday’s Super Bowl. And the Chiefs, like most elected Democrats, chose to continue playing by the old regulations, but the Eagles started gut-punching, facemask-pulling, and even threw five extra players onto the field.
The only team that would ever win would be the one most willing to play dirty or buy off the refs. And, increasingly, that’s where we are today, both with our democracy and our economy.
We know this is crazy: Every state in the union has put into place an agency to regulate insurance companies because that very industry has a long, horrible history of ripping people off and refusing to pay claims unless the power of the state is invoked against them.
We regulate banks and brokerages for the same reason; when we deregulated them in the 1920s and the late 1990s the result was huge rip-offs that produced the Republican Great Depression and the Bush Crash of 2008.
We regulate automobile manufacturers because they have a history of putting profits over the lives of their customers (Ford Pinto 900 dead, GM trucks 2000 dead, etc.); refineries because their emissions cause cancer and asthma; drugs because unscrupulous manufacturers killed people in previous eras; workplace safety after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 young women; voting because corrupt politicians rigged elections.
We regulate traffic with signs and stoplights to keep order and reduce accidents; we regulate police to prevent them from abusing innocent people; we regulate building codes so peoples’ homes don’t collapse or catch on fire from faulty cheap wiring.
And there was a time in America when we regulated money in politics and guaranteed the right to vote.
Those two types of regulations were passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries after multiple scandals, like in 1899 when William Clark — then the nation’s second-richest man — openly bribed Montana legislators by standing outside the legislative chamber passing out brand new $1000 bills to the men who voted his way. Or when state after state — most all former Confederate states — repeatedly refused to allow Black people to vote.
We passed regulations guaranteeing a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and the right to unionize to create the world’s first large-scale middle class. And we regulated the morbidly rich with a 90% income tax rate to prevent them from amassing so much wealth that their financial power could become a threat to our democratic republic.
And, of course, it’s those regulations — money in politics, the right to vote, and preventing the accumulation of dangerous levels of wealth — to which today’s broligarchs most strenuously object.
In each case, it was five Republicans on the US Supreme Court who gutted our protective regulations and put America on a direct collision course with today’s oligarchic neofascist takeover.
— They ruled that billionaires can buy politicians because giving money in exchange for votes isn’t bribery, but merely an expression of First Amendment-protected “free speech.” — They claimed that corporations aren’t soulless creations of the law but are “persons” with the same right to share their “free speech” with politicians who do their bidding. — And they ruled that voting is not a right in America — in open defiance of US law— but a mere privilege, giving the green light to Republicans to purge or refuse to count over 4 million votes in the 2024 election.
The result of all this Republican corruption is that the will of the majority of American voters hasn’t been fulfilled in two generations. The last time our political system was truly responsive to the voters was in the 1960s, when Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps were created, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed. And in the early 1970s, when we outlawed big money in politics.
Then, in 1978, five Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in the Bellotti decision(written by Lewis Powell himself) that corporations are persons and money is merely free speech. Two years later, Reagan floated into the White House on a river of oil money and systematically began gutting the protective regulations that had built the largest and most successful middle class the world had ever seen.
Since then, big money has frozen us like a mosquito in amber. Even Obama’s big effort to establish a national healthcare system with an option for Medicare had to kneel before the throne of rightwing billionaires and the insurance industry.
Every developed country in the world has some variation on a free or low-cost national healthcare system, and free or even subsidized higher education. In most developed countries homelessness is not a crisis, nobody goes bankrupt because somebody in their family got sick, and jobs pay well enough (and have union pensions) so people can retire after 30 or 40 years in the workforce and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
But not in America. Since the Reagan Revolution, rightwing billionaires have blocked any of those things from happening because they’d be paid for with taxes, and there’s nothing rightwing billionaires hate more than paying taxes.
— Dark money has destroyed the notion of one-person-one-vote. — Monopoly — allowed because corporations can now buy politicians — has destroyed the small businesses that once filled America’s malls and downtowns. — And voter suppression and voter list purges handed the 2024 election to Trump, as reporter Greg Palast documented in a recent, shocking report.
So, yeah, let’s do away with all the regulations like wannabe Kings Elon and Donald say. And make the United States look and operate more like Syria and its failed-state relatives than anything Americans would recognize.
This country is in serious trouble. The president is a felon, a chronic liar, a cheater, a racist, isn’t very bright, and has an ego the size of Florida. At his side is a South Africa neo-nazi who spent $290 million to help the Orange MAGAt destroy the Constitution and most other rules and laws holding our country together. Hal Ginsberg’s hour-long YouTube videopodcast can be seen any time. Our special guest today was Fred Steudler, a Monterey resident from the days of KRXA talk radio.
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