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Fears that the United States is in the midst of a constitutional crisis — or something significantly worse — intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that “he who saves his country does not violate any law,” a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Trump’s post on X — the platform owned by billionaire shadow government leader Elon Musk — came as his administration continued its sweeping and destructive assault on the federal government and workforce, running roughshod over the law in the process.
Trump’s post Saturday was the latest brazen signal that the president doesn’t recognize limits on his authority to impose his far-right agenda.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie called Trump’s message “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.”
Since taking office less than a month ago, Trump and Musk have moved aggressively to dismantle federal agencies and remove any officials who could shine light on or obstruct their efforts.
Trump, his handpicked Cabinet officials, and Musk have also disregarded or openly attacked the other two co-equal branches of government, accusing judges who have moved to halt or limit the new administration’s actions of being Democratic partisans.
In some cases, the Trump administration has actively defied rulings from federal courts, an alarming indication of what’s to come.
Yasmin Abusaif and Douglas Keith of the Brennan Center for Justice noted Friday that “the last time the United States saw widespread open defiance of court orders by elected officials was when governors in Southern states refused to integrate their schools after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public education in Brown v. Board of Education.”
“President Dwight Eisenhower — though he was no fan of the court’s decision — ultimately dispatched troops to the South to help enforce the ruling, saying, ‘The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional process in this country, and I will obey,'” Abusaif and Keith continued. “The governors’ efforts to defy court orders are widely acknowledged as one of the most shameful periods in U.S. history.”
Frank Bowman, a law professor and former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for Slate last week that “with each passing day, the practical ability of the courts to stop, or even materially hinder, the catastrophe diminishes.”
“If Trump successfully defies the courts,” Bowman added, “the only remaining obstacle to dictatorship will be public revulsion, national popular protest, and the hope that such a reaction would cause Trump to retreat and, at long last, recall some fraction of the Republican Party to its constitutional duty.”
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