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Welcome to America’s Fourth Great Constitutional Rupture
Americans are prone to venerate our Constitution, mythologizing the founding generation as uniquely wise, and our subsequent constitutional history as a process of evolution toward an ever more perfect union.
But American constitutional history is far more fraught, its evolution a kind of punctuated equilibrium marked by mass extinction of prior forms and precedents. Each of these moments has reshaped the way our Constitution works in fundamental ways, providing a new framework for normal politics for a new era.
The scope of President Trump’s challenge to the existing constitutional order — largely through a blitzkrieg of executive orders, many of them in blatant disregard of established precedent and legislation — suggests we may be in the process of another such discontinuous and disruptive moment.
The question is whether it will transform our constitutional order fruitfully yet again, or accelerate a final degeneration into Caesarism.
Democrats Approach Their Enabling Moment
If Democrats provide the decisive votes to fund this government, it will reverberate through history for all time.
The shortest summary of the now-unfolding plot against America is that the right lost decades-long ideological battles over the proper size of government, and who gets to wield power in the United States—then, instead of moving on to other areas of political disagreement, decided to impose its will criminally, and in exceptionally corrupt fashion.
Third Judge Blocks Trump on Birthright Citizenship
A third federal judge indefinitely blocked President Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, dealing another stark blow to the controversial directive.
Is controversial the new euphemism for unconstitutional?
Trump Signals He Might Ignore the Courts
The United States is sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis. Not only has the Trump administration seized for itself extraconstitutional powers, but yesterday, it raised the specter that, should the courts apply the text of the Constitution and negate its plans, it will simply ignore them…
Donald Trump is unilaterally declaring the right to ignore spending levels set by Congress, and to eliminate agencies that Congress voted to create. What makes this demand so astonishing is that Trump could persuade Congress, which he commands in personality-cult style, to follow his demands. Republicans presently control both houses of Congress, and any agency that Congress established, it can also cut or eliminate.
Yet Trump refuses to even try to pass his plan democratically. And as courts have stepped in to halt his efforts to ignore the law, he is now threatening to ignore them too.
Judge Says Trump Administration Is Violating His Order
A federal judge says the Trump administration has been violating his order to resume funding federal grants that the White House attempted to block with a blanket spending freeze last month.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered the administration to ‘immediately restore frozen funding’ while his order remains in effect, including to the National Institutes of Health and to fulfill the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act.
Said McConnell: “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”
With the leader of a failed coup back in the White House and pursuing an unprecedented assault on the constitutional order, many Americans are starting to wrap their mind around what authoritarianism could look like in America. If they have a hard time imagining something like the single-party or military regimes of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or more modern regimes like those in China or Russia, that is with good reason. A full-scale dictatorship in which elections are meaningless and regime opponents are locked up, exiled, or killed remains highly unlikely in America.
But that doesn’t mean the country won’t experience authoritarianism in some form. Rather than fascism or single-party dictatorship, the United States is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbent abuse of power systematically tilts the playing field against the opposition.
FBI Must Disclose More About Trump Classified Docs Case
The dismissal of criminal charges against Donald Trump for concealing classified records at Mar-a-Lago eliminated a significant barrier to making records about the probe public, a federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Trump’s election as president — which forced the end of the criminal case — combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity mean Trump is effectively insulated from any criminal responsibility for his conduct.
That means the FBI’s previous reasons for refusing to gather and disclose records related to the probe no longer apply, Howell wrote in a ruling in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by journalist Jason Leopold. She noted that while the dismissal of charges against Trump may have reduced his criminal exposure, it “ironically” made him more susceptible to public scrutiny for his conduct.
Trump, Musk actions put America at risk of ‘a form of default,’ former Treasury chiefs warn
Five former Treasury secretaries warned Monday that recent actions at the Treasury Department by Trump administration officials and Elon Musk’s DOGE team raise ‘substantial cause for concern’ that the United States’ financial commitments are being ‘unlawfully’ undermined.
Wrote the former secretaries in the New York Times: “We have during our service in the Treasury Department faced moments of crisis, when the specter of an American default loomed. Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain.”
Justice Department Drops Charges Against Eric Adams
The Justice Department on Monday told federal prosecutors in New York to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted in September and accused of being under illegal foreign influence and accepting bribes through campaign donations and luxury travel perks.
Trump Reveals Plan to Kill New York’s Congestion Pricing
…Trump has formulated a plan to force New York to ‘kill’ congestion pricing in Manhattan through the federal Department of Transportation.
Among potential penalties available to the agency are withholding millions of dollars in funding and reopening the environmental review process that authorized the toll under the Biden administration.
Further adventures in ethnic cleansing: Trump Says Palestinians Would Not Return to Gaza
Trump said that Palestinians displaced from Gaza to neighboring countries under a U.S. proposal to develop the land would not have the right to return.
Said Trump: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing. In other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them.”
Trump Threatens to Cut Aid to Jordan and Egypt
…Trump said on Monday that he could cut aid to Jordan and Egypt if they refused his demand to permanently take in most Palestinians from Gaza, substantially increasing the pressure on key allies in the region to back his audacious proposal to relocate the entire population of the territory in order to redevelop it.
Russia-U.S. relations “balancing on the brink of a breakup,” Kremlin warns
The Kremlin issued a warning on Monday about the fragility of current U.S.-Russia relations, after refusing to confirm that President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently spoke.
Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to speedily end the Russia-Ukraine war, but Russian leaders said on Monday that Putin’s stipulations had to be met before any resolution would be possible.
Oddly, Ukraine has no incentive to agree to such stipulations.
Republicans Not United on Dismantling USAID
In truth, not even all Republicans are united on this. USAID has long enjoyed support from a certain type of Republican in Washington who sees it as an effective promotion of soft power abroad.
One veteran staffer told Jonathan Martin that its destruction places American workers abroad “in dangerous situations.”
“What security clearance?” — New York Attorney General Leticia James, when told Trump revoked her security clearance.
House Republicans Eye Deeper Medicaid Cuts
House Republican leaders are looking to cut federal spending by $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as part of their reconciliation push.
House GOP negotiators now believe they will have to dig deeper into Medicaid spending to meet those targets, including potentially cutting benefits for enrollees, according to these sources. This will be a complicated political challenge. Some House Republicans are going to be skeptical about slashing Medicaid spending so heavily, and the White House will have to agree as well. We scooped last week that Republicans were eyeing $4.7 trillion in tax cuts.
Lawsuit Will Test Trump’s Power to Fire Workers
A federal ethics enforcer swept up in a spree of firings President Donald Trump carried out Friday night is suing to get his job back.
The lawsuit from Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger is the latest case that will test the president’s power to fire officials across the executive branch despite federal laws that seek to protect those officials from politically motivated firings.
The President’s Favorite Decision: The Influence of Trump v. U.S. in Trump 2.0
Presidential immunity was not the most important part of the case.
Trump Eases Enforcement of Law Banning Overseas Bribes
President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order rolling back enforcement of a law that makes it illegal for US companies to bribe foreign officials…
Serendipity:
Let’s Remember Minneapolis’s Historically Awful Super Bowl Halftime Show
Plus Mankato's growing surveillance state, honoring a cool-ass old building, and winter parking news you can use in today's Flyover news roundup.
