This is one of Rachel Maddow’s best clips. She says that we worried about what Trump might do if he won re-election. Wonder no more. It is happening. He is a full-fledged authoritarian, intent on smashing the Constitution and our rights. what can we do? She has some ideas.
Archives for category: Freedom of Speech
John Merrow was the education correspondent for PBS for many years. Now, in retirement, he continues to write and help us think through the existential moments in which we live.
More than five million demonstrators in about 2000 communities stepped forward to declare their opposition to Donald Trump, on June 14th. “No Kings Day” was also Trump’s 79th birthday, Flag Day, and the anniversary of the creation of the American army.
So now we know what many of us are against, but the central question remains unanswered: What do we stand FOR? What do we believe in?
Just as FDR called for Four Freedoms, the Democratic party needs to articulate its First Principles. I suggest three: “The Public Good,” “Individual Rights,” and “Rebuilding America after Trump.”
THE PUBLIC GOOD: Democrats must take our nation’s motto, E pluribus unum, seriously, and they must vigorously support the common good. That means supporting public libraries, public parks, public schools, public transportation, public health, public safety, public broadcasting, and public spaces–almost anything that has the word ‘public’ in it.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Because the fundamental rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution are often subject to interpretation, debate, and even violent disagreement, Democrats must be clear. Free speech, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, and other fundamental rights are not up for debate, and nor is a woman’s right to control her own body.
Health care is a right, and Democrats must make that a reality.
Conflict is inevitable–think vaccination requirements–and Democrats should come down on the side of the public good.
Because Americans have a right to safety, Democrats should endorse strong gun control measures that ban assault weapons that have only one purpose–mass killing.
REBUILDING AMERICA AFTER TRUMP: The Trump regime was and continues to be a disaster for a majority of Americans and for our standing across the world, but it’s not enough to condemn his greed and narcissism, even if he goes to prison. Let’s first acknowledge that Trump tapped into serious resentment among millions of Americans, which further divided our already divided country.
The challenge is to work to bring us together, to make ‘one out of many’ in the always elusive ‘more perfect union.’ The essential first step is to abandon the ‘identity politics’ that Democrats have practiced for too long. Instead, Democrats must adopt policies that bring us together, beginning with mandatory National Service:
National Service: Bring back the draft for young men and women to require two years of (paid) National Service, followed by two years of tuition or training credits at an accredited institution. One may serve in the military, Americorps, the Peace Corps, or other helping organizations. One may teach or work in distressed communities, or rebuild our national parks, or serve in other approved capacities. JFK famously said “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Let’s ask BOTH questions.
Additionally: 1) Urge states to beef up civic education in public schools, teaching real history, asking tough questions. At the same time, federal education policies should encourage Community schools, because research proves that schools that welcome families are more successful across many measures.
2) Rebuild Our Aging Infrastructure: This is urgent, and it will also create jobs.
3) Adopt fiscal and monetary policies to address our burgeoning national debt. This should include higher taxes on the wealthy, emulating Dwight Eisenhower.
4) Adopt sensible and realistic immigration policies that welcome newcomers who arrive legally but close our borders to illegal immigration.
5) Rebuilding America also means rebuilding our alliances around the world. Democrats should support NATO and Ukraine, and rejoin efforts to combat climate change.
Government Executive pays close attention to the federal workplace; its reporting is especially crucial these days, as Trump attempts to downsize, demoralize, and politicize career civil servants. It reported today that a federal judge in California blocked Trump’s plan to crush federal employee unions. It is not clear how this decision will be affected by the U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier today that federal judges would no longer be able to issue national injunctions. Will the judge’s decision apply only in the 9th Circuit, which includes California and other western states?
Erich Wagner wrote in Government Executive:
A federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction late Tuesday once again blocking President Trump’s executive order to strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of their right to join and be represented by a union, finding “persuasive evidence” that the measure was implemented in retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order invoking a rarely used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip most federal employees of their collective bargaining rights under the auspices of national security. Since then, although agencies have ostensibly refrained from formally repudiating union contracts as they await a green light from courts, they have broadly disregarded the terms of those agreements, withdrawing from ongoing negotiations and grievance proceedings and cancelling the automatic collection of union dues from workers’ paychecks.
In a 29-page decision, U.S. District Judge James Donato, an Obama appointee, found that a coalition of unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees raise a “serious question as to whether their First Amendment rights have been violated.”
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“In the words of a physical therapist who works at a VA medical center and is an executive vice president for the National Veterans Affairs Council of AFGE, ‘From my interactions with other VA employees, I believe many workers will feel pressure to conform to the administration’s political views and be reluctant to raise health and safety concerns or otherwise criticize agency management, for fear of further retaliation,’” Donato wrote. “[This] is persuasive evidence of the chilling effect of the government’s challenged conduct.”
Donato carefully crafted his ruling solely around the unions claims that they were retaliated against for opposing the Trump administration’s workforce policies. Last month, a federal appeals court issued a stay blocking a similar injunction in a legal challenge brought by the National Treasury Employees Union, finding the injuries in that case were still too “speculative” in nature, and impinging on the president’s legal deference on national security issues.
“The court has no intention in this order of second-guessing the president’s national security determinations or calling on the government to prove the determinations were properly made,” he wrote. “As noted, the executive branch is owed deference in such matters. But a claim of national security does not, of course, automatically negate the Constitution, particularly with respect to the First Amendment.”
Attorneys for the Trump administration contended that Donato lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and that the unions should instead pursue their claims before the Federal Labor Relations Authority. But Donato found the argument too circular in nature, describing it in a footnote as a “Heads, I win; tails, you lose” proposition.
“The government says plaintiffs’ claims should still go to the FLRA because plaintiffs allege that ‘Executive order 14,251 is invalid, meaning the agencies and subdivisions identified in the executive order remain subject to [federal labor law],’” Donato wrote. “[This] is an dd suggestion, particularly in light of the government’s insistence that EO 14251 has already excluded a large swath of agencies and subdivisions from Chapter 71 [of Title 5 of the U.S. Code]. The question of the court’s jurisdiction is not answered by the plaintiffs’ or defendants’ beliefs about the merits of the case. It is answered by the plain language of the [statute].”
In a statement Wednesday, AFGE National President Everett Kelley applauded the ruling.
“President Trump revoked our members’ union rights in retaliation for our advocacy on behalf of federal workers and the American people, and we are grateful that Judge Donato saw through his disingenuous ‘national security’ justification and has ordered the immediate restoration of their rights,” he said. “Federal employees have had the right to join a union and bargain collectively for decades, including during President Trump’s first term, and at no time have employees’ union rights caused concern for our nation’s national security.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that legislatures in Republican-controlled states are passing laws to restrict teaching about racism or any kind of DEI in higher education. Such state laws follow the lead of Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, who was first to launch the war on academic freedom, but also the policies of Trump, who has declared that he too will make war on “woke” (that is, anything that is honest about the dark side of the American past.)
Teaching social work in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Cassandra E. Simon often assigns readings that describe how the families her students might one day serve have been impacted by more than a century of housing, employment, and education discrimination. The associate professor has encouraged her students to engage in spirited discussions about race, even assigning a project in which they advocate for or against a social-justice issue.
Doing any of those things today, she argues in a federal lawsuit, could get her fired from the state flagship, where she’s taught for 25 years. Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed into law a sweeping bill that restricts what professors can teach about race. If any of their lessons veer into what conservative politicians have deemed “divisive concepts,” faculty members risk being reported, investigated, and potentially fired.
That kind of incursion into the curriculum is growing and prompting a flurry of First Amendment challenges from Simon and other plaintiffs. It’s a line state lawmakers did not cross early on in their push to dismantle DEI efforts, even as universities shuttered offices, laid off employees, canceled scholarships, and called off diversity training. But over the past two years, more than a dozen laws have been enacted that either limit which classes can be taught or imposed restrictions on what professors can say in the classroom, according to a Chronicle analysis of state legislation and a compilation of what PEN America calls “educational gag orders.”
This year especially “has been a banner year for censorship at a state level across the country,” said Amy B. Reid, senior manager at PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. “The point of a lot of these restrictions is to put people on guard, worried that anything or everything could be prohibited so you really have to watch what you say.”
Some of the chief architects of the DEI-dismantling playbook have insisted that they’re not trying to silence anyone. In a January 26 letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal by Ilya Shapiro and Jesse Arm of the Manhattan Institute, the institute declared that “Conservatives Have No Interest In Censorship.”
“By ending practices such as identity-based discrimination and compulsory, politically coercive diversity statements,” these laws “protect the rights of professors and students to engage freely on all topics, including race,” they wrote.
Despite such reassurances, recent bills seeking to eliminate diversity efforts are encroaching on curricula in a variety of ways. Some states, like Texas, Florida, and Utah, are giving boards more control over what goes into the core curriculum, as well as the ability to shut down programs with low enrollments or questionable work-force advantages. Others, like Alabama and Mississippi, have erected guardrails on topics that can be discussed in the classroom.
Supporters say these laws are needed to prevent liberal professors from veering off into lessons that amount to activism. Some conservative lawmakers argue that it’s their responsibility, as stewards of taxpayer dollars, to ensure public universities are offering degrees that will help students be successful and land jobs.
Critics see these incursions as infringements on free speech and academic freedom.
The intentions of those who launched “the war on woke” are irrelevant to the reality of what happens when their concerns are taken up by legislatures intent on stamping out disturbing but historically accurate discussions of race and gender. When red-state legislators restrict academic freedom, they do it with an axe, not a scalpel. The result is to instill fear in professors about what they teach and whether they will be fired for thought crimes.
Voice of America is known worldwide for its straightforward, unbiased presentation of world news. Trump placed MAGA enthusiast Keri Lake in charge. At his behest, she just laid off most of the VOA staff. Remember when America was great? We thought we had a message for the world and that the truth would set us free.
But Trump doesn’t want to “Make America great Again.” He wants to make America a land of bitter divisions, where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer and sicker, unable to get health insurance, medical care, good schools, or any opportunity to rise into the middle class. For that, you need unions and good jobs.
The New York Times just reported:
The Trump administration sent layoff notices on Friday to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom.
The layoffs, known as reductions in force, will shrink the staff count at the news organization to less than 200, around one-seventh of its head count at the beginning of 2025. They put Voice of America journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are let go on Sept. 1.
The termination notices are the latest round of the Trump administration’s attack on federally funded news networks, including Voice of America.
In March, President Trump accused the news group of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda,” calling it “the voice of radical America.” He then signed an executive order that effectively called for dismantling of the news agency and put nearly all Voice of America reporters on paid leave, ceasing its news operations for the first time since its founding in 1942.
Kari Lake, a fierce Trump ally and a senior adviser at the news organization’s oversight agency, U.S. Agency for Global Media, notified Congress earlier this month that her agency intended to eliminate most positions at Voice of America. Her letter identified fewer than 20 employees who must remain at the media organization, according to laws passed by Congress to establish and fund it. Friday’s termination notices leave around 200 employees.
Ms. Lake’s decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds U.S. ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” Patsy Widakuswara, a former Voice of America White House bureau chief who was placed on leave and is leading a lawsuit against Ms. Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said in a statement.
She encouraged Congress to intervene and to signal support for Voice of America, which was founded to combat Nazi propaganda and reported in countries that suppress independent reporting and free speech.
“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-America propaganda,” Ms. Widakuswara said. “Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice.”
Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor for North Alabama. She writes an important blog called Civil Discourse, where she usually explains court decisions and legal issues. Today she turns to education.
Today I’m recovering from the graduation tour, one in Boulder and one in Boston in the last two weeks, and getting back into the groove of writing as I continue to work on my book (which I hope you’ll preorder if you haven’t already). The graduations came at a good moment.
Watching my kids graduate, one from college and one with a master’s in science, was an emotional experience—the culmination of their years of hard work, sacrifice, and growth, all captured in a single walk across the stage. They, like their friends, my law students, and amazing students across the county, now enter society as adults. Even beyond the individual stories of hardships overcome and perseverance, witnessing these rites of passage makes me feel profoundly hopeful. The intelligence and commitment of the students—many of whom are already tackling big problems and imagining new, bold solutions—gives me a level of confidence about what comes next for our country. In a time when it’s easy to get discouraged, their commitment and idealism stands as a powerful reminder that they are ready to take on the mess we have left them.
The kids are alright, even though they shouldn’t have to be. Talking with them makes me think they will find a way, even if it’s unfair to ask it of them and despite the fact that their path will be more difficult than it should be. Courage is contagious, and they seem to have caught it. Their educations have prepared them for the future we all find ourselves in now.
As students across the country prepared to graduate this year, Trump released his so-called “skinny budget.” If that’s how they want to frame it, then education has been put on a starvation diet—at least the kind of education that develops independent thinkers who thrive in an environment where questions are asked and answered. Trump pitches the budget as “gut[ting] a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security.” Defense spending would increase by 13% under his proposal.
The plan for education is titled, “Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice.”Among its provisions, the announcement focuses on the following items:
- “The Budget continues the process of shutting down the Department of Education.”
- “The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, that have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”
As we discussed in March, none of this is a surprise. Trump is implementing the Project 2025 plan. In December of 2024, I wrote about how essential it is to dumb down the electorate if you’re someone like Donald Trump and you want to succeed. A rich discussion in our forums followed. At the time I wrote, “Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.” But it’s really true for the entirety of democracy.
Explaining the expanded funding for charter schools, a newly written section of the Department of Education website reads more like political propaganda than education information: “The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has reigned [Ed: Note the word “”reigned” is misspelled] in the federal government’s influence over state Charter School Program (CSP) grant awards. The Department removed a requirement set by the Biden Administration that the U.S. Secretary of Education review information on how states approve select entities’ (e.g., private colleges and universities) authorization of charter schools in states where they are already lawful authorizers. This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape, and expands school choice options for students and families.”
There are already 37 lawsuits related to Trump’s changes to education. Uncertainty is no way to educate America’s children. Cutting funding for research because you want to score political points about DEI or climate change is no way to ensure we nurture future scientists and other thinkers and doers…
I am reminded again of George Orwell’s words: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” The historians among us, and those who delve into history, will play a key role in getting us through this. Our love and understanding of history can help us stay grounded, understanding who we are, who we don’t want to become, and why the rule of law matters so damn much to all of it….
Thanks for being here with me and for supporting Civil Discourse by reading and subscribing. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources necessary to do this work, and I am deeply grateful for them.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
In case you wondered, I now call DOGE something else. I call it DOGS, although truthfully that’s not fair to dogs. Dogs are wonderful creatures; In my experience, dogs give you unconditional loyalty and love. These DOGS are loyal to one man, Elon Musk. They are shredding the federal government, destroying the careers and lives of tens of thousands of professional civil servants. They have gathered our personal data. They are embedded in high-level positions across the government. They should all be fired and sent back to Elon Musk.
But the bigger risk to our democracy is Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most powerful positions in the federal government. He is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist. He is working in opposition to the Founding Fathers, who made clear their intention to keep religion out of government.
Democracy Docket reports on Vought:
Though Elon Musk is leaving the White House, DOGE isn’t going anywhere.
It appears that Russell Vought — Trump’s budget hawk and one of the chief architects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — is stepping in to become DOGE’s new power broker.
With Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist, at the helm, the slash-and-burn effort against the federal government may be on the cusp of an even darker turn.
In many ways, Vought is what Musk is not. After working at public policy organizations for nearly two decades, he has a far better understanding of how the government works — and how its weaknesses can be exploited. Despite advising Trump for almost 10 years, he’s also kept a fairly low profile, rarely giving interviews or speaking in public.
And Vought appears to be motivated first and foremost by creating a Christian nation controlled by an overtly Christian government.
Last year, Vought told undercover journalists with the Centre for Climate Reporting that he wants “to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation.”
“And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism,” Vought said. “That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
To achieve that, Vought said in the interview he seeks to replace the non-partisan and merit-based federal civil service with a bureaucracy in which employment hinges on allegiance to Trump. He said he also seeks to impound congressionally approved funding, help coordinate mass deportations and find ways to let Trump use the military to put down protesters.
As former Trump adviser Steve Bannon recently told The Atlantic, “Russ has got a vision. He’s not an anarchist. He’s a true believer.”
Federal agencies, in particular the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), have already implemented numerous policies that Vought drafted to achieve those goals.
Earlier this year, OPM proposed new regulations that would formally revive Schedule F, a key tool developed by Vought to gut the federal government and replace career public servants with partisan ideologues.
In another move championed by Vought, the personnel office last week also announced a s0-called “Merit Hiring Plan” that would, if implemented, ask prospective hires for the thousands of DOGE-induced vacancies across the federal government to write short essays explaining their levels of patriotism and support for the president’s policies.
“How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired,” reads one of the essay prompts.
Vought, too, has recently taken steps to impound funds.
This week, the White House sent Congress proposed spending cuts — also called a rescission package — that’s been backed by Vought in order to formalize cuts made by DOGE. The $9.4 billion package targets funding for NPR, PBS, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid spending.
The rescission process allows a president to avoid spending money on discretionary programs, and since rescission bills only require simple majority approval in the House and Senate, there’s a chance some of the proposed cuts will become law. If they do, they will be the first presidentially proposed rescissions accepted by Congress since 1999.
If Congress doesn’t pass the package, the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which restricts when and how the president can delay or withhold federal funds, requires Trump to release the funds — that’s assuming that the administration follows the law.
The same day the White House sent Congress the package, Vought threatened that if lawmakers don’t pass the rescissions, the executive branch would find ways to override Congress’ constitutional authority to allocate funding.
“We are dusting off muscle memory that existed for 200 years before President Nixon in the 1970s and Congress acted to try to take away the president’s ability to spend less,” Vought said.
When asked by CNN whether he was attempting to tee up a legal fight to challenge the Impoundment Control Act as unconstitutional, Vought implied he was.
“We’re certainly not taking impoundment off of the table. We’re not in love with the law,” Vought said.
Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) is one of the most effective members of Congress. She is pro-labor and pro-public schools.
Watch as she rips into Russ Vought, director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget and primary author of Project 2025.
Thomas Edsall writes a regular feature for The New York Times. In this stunning article, he recounts the views of numerous scholars about what Trump has done since his Inauguration.
This is a gift article, meaning you can open the link and finish reading the article, which is usually behind a paywall.
Edsall writes:
One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency.
The targets of President Trump’s assaults include the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America’s foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more.
J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, succinctly described his own view of the Trump presidency, writing by email that there had never
been a U.S. president who I consider even to have been destructive, let alone a president who has intentionally and deliberately set out to destroy literally every institution in America, up to and including American democracy and the rule of law. I even believe he is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate.
Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years, even with a new and determined president and Congress.
Let’s look at just one target of the administration’s vendetta, medical research. Trump’s attacks include cancellation of thousands of grants, cuts in the share of grants going to universities and hospitals and proposed cuts of 40 percent or more in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Science Foundation.
“This is going to completely kneecap biomedical research in this country,” Jennifer Zeitzer, the deputy executive director at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, told Science magazine. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, warned that cuts will “totally destroy the nation’s public health infrastructure.”
I asked scholars of the presidency to evaluate the scope of Trump’s wreckage. “The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote by email, “is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired.”
I asked Wilentz whether Trump was unique in terms of his destructiveness or if there were presidential precedents. Wilentz replied:
There is no precedent, not even close, unless you consider Jefferson Davis an American president. Even to raise the question, with all due respect, is to minimize the crisis we’re in and the scope of Trump et al.’s. intentions.
Another question: Was Trump re-elected to promote an agenda of wreaking havoc, or is he pursuing an elitist right-wing program created by conservative ideologues who saw in Trump’s election the opportunity to pursue their goals?
Wilentz’s reply:
Trump’s closest allies intended chaos wrought by destruction which helps advance the elite reactionary programs. Chaos allows Trump to expand his governing by emergency powers, which could well include the imposition of martial law, if he so chose.
I asked Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin, how permanent the mayhem Trump has inflicted may prove to be. “Not to be flip,” Rudalevige replied by email, “but for children abroad denied food or lifesaving medicine because of arbitrary aid cuts, the answer is already distressingly permanent.”
From a broader perspective, Rudalevige wrote:
The damage caused to governmental expertise and simple competence could be long lasting. Firing probationary workers en masse may reduce the government employment head count, slightly, but it also purged those most likely to bring the freshest view and most up-to-date skills to government service, while souring them on that service. And norms of nonpoliticization in government service have taken a huge hit.
I sent the question I posed to Wilentz to other scholars of the presidency. It produced a wide variety of answers. Here is Rudalevige’s:
The comp that comes to mind is Andrew Johnson. It’s hardly guaranteed that Reconstruction after the Civil War would have succeeded even under Lincoln’s leadership. But Johnson took action after action designed to prevent racial reconciliation and economic opportunity, from vetoing key legislation to refusing to prevent mob violence against Blacks to pardoning former members of the Confederacy hierarchy. He affirmatively made government work worse and to prevent it from treating its citizens equally.
Another question: How much is Trump’s second-term agenda the invention of conservative elites, and how much is it a response to the demands of Trump’s MAGA supporters?
“Trump is not at all an unwitting victim,” Rudalevige wrote, “but those around him with wider and more systemic goals have more authority and are better organized in pursuit of those goals than they were in the first term.”
In this context, Rudalevige continued, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025
was not just a campaign manifesto but a bulwark against the inconsistency and individualism its authors thought had undermined the effectiveness of Trump’s first term. It was an insurance policy to secure the administrative state for conservative thought and yoke it to a cause beyond Trump or even Trumpism.
The alliance with Trump was a marriage of convenience — and the Trump legacy when it comes to staffing the White House and executive branch is a somewhat ironic one, as an unwitting vehicle for an agenda that goes far beyond the personalization of the presidency.
In the past, when presidential power has expanded, Rudalevige argued,
it has been in response to crisis: the Civil War, World War I, the Depression and World War II, 9/11. But no similar objective crisis faced us. So one had to be declared — via proclamations of “invasion” and the like — or even created. In the ensuing crisis more power may be delegated by Congress. But the analogue is something like an arsonist who rushes to put out the fire he started.
One widely shared view among those I queried is that Trump has severely damaged America’s relations with traditional allies everywhere.
Mara Rudman, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, wrote in an email:
The most lasting impact of this term will be felt in the damage done to the reputation of the United States as a safe harbor where the rule of law is king and where the Constitution is as sacred a national document as any country has developed.
Through his utter disregard for the law, Trump has shown both how precious and how fragile are the rules that undergird our institutions, our economic and national security and the foundation for our democracy.
To finish this excellent article, please open the link.
Diane Ravitch's blog 