Congressional Republicans have repeatedly failed a simple test: Choose between President Trump and the Constitution.
An upcoming vote will give Senators another chance to make a better choice.
It shouldn’t be so hard. After all, senators took an oath to uphold the Constitution. But then, so did Trump, and we see how little it means to him.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants. That’s dead wrong. Our presidents are not kings. Under our Constitution, no person, including the president, is above the law.
Yet Trump and his chainsaw-wielding sidekick Elon Musk have repeatedly broken the law in their zeal to gut federal agencies that serve the American people and protect us from wrongdoing by corporations. Trump has issued orders that are unconstitutional according to rulings by the Supreme Court.
Trump seems to hope that the current majority on the Supreme Court will rewrite the Constitution in line with his policy preferences. After all, those justices already made up a sweeping theory about presidential immunity that has likely encouraged Trump’s lawless behavior.
As Trump and his team dismantle checks and balances, use the government to attack his personal enemies and impose his will on universities, media and private businesses, federal courts have repeatedly stepped in to defend the rule of law — and the lives of Americans.
Trump and Musk hate being told they have to follow the law. So they’re attacking judges who have delivered that message.
Trump and Musk have both called for the impeachment of federal judges whose rulings they don’t like. It got so bad that Chief Justice Roberts released a statement last week saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” It was worded more mildly than the situation called for, but it was still a rebuke.
Even after Roberts’s polite reproach, Trump and Musk have continued their attacks on federal judges, and MAGA-supporting Republicans in the House of Representatives have drawn up more articles of impeachment. Musk is maxing out contributions to those House members.
The question on everyone’s mind is what the Supreme Court will do if Trump starts defying court orders as Vice President JD Vance and right-wing pundits have publicly urged him to do. Actually, we may already be past “if” and into “now that.”
The administration is stonewalling attempts by a federal judge to determine whether the administration brazenly defied a court order. In that case, Trump’s Justice Department asserts that he has an “inherent” power to declare someone an enemy and send that person to prison in a foreign country without any opportunity to question the evidence. This goes beyond unconstitutional and into the realm of anti-constitutional, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued last week. It threatens every American’s freedom.
We urgently need our courts and our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, to reaffirm the checks and balances designed to prevent abuses of power by any president.
Trump is filling top Justice Department positions with his own lawyers and MAGA loyalists. Three more of them came before the Senate Judiciary Committee recently. Each, under questioning from senators, either refused to commit to following federal court orders or declined to say what they would do if Trump asked them to do something illegal or unconstitutional. This included Aaron Reitz, nominated to lead the Office of Legal Policy; Harmeet Dhillon, nominated to head the Civil Rights Division; and John Sauer, nominated as solicitor general.
Sauer infamously once argued in court that a president would be immune from criminal prosecution, even if he ordered the Navy SEALS to assassinate a political opponent, unless the Senate first convicted him in an impeachment trial.
Nominees’ failure to commit to following court orders was not only disturbing to Democratic senators, it also earned them a stern warning from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.): “Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court.”
Unfortunately, Kennedy went ahead and voted to send all three nominations to the Senate floor anyway, a sign that he didn’t think his own principled advice was important enough to risk Trump’s wrath.
The full Senate will soon be voting on whether to confirm Reitz, Sauer and Dhillon to powerful positions in the Justice Department. Those votes will be opportunities to stand with the Constitution and all Americans who rely on its protections against the abuses of power by a would-be king.
Senators, it’s time to act like you take your oath seriously.
