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constitutional crisis
Trump’s Sovereigntist Imperialism Will Trigger Self-Defeating US Decline
As Trump transforms the United States into pariah nation, he will be accelerating the nation’s fall from power, generating increasingly dangerous domestic and international turmoil and insecurity.
Feb 15, 2025
Days after November’s Trump-MAGA election victory, a senior Russian diplomat asked his American interlocutors how great a historical transformation it signaled. Was it the equivalent of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New Deal, or the South deserting the Democratic Party in response to the 1965 Civil Rights Act?
Within days of his inauguration it was clear, Jamelle Bouie wrote in The New York Times, that U.S. President Donald Trump and his cronies were “waging war on the American system of government.” Billionaire plutocrats captured Washington to increase their immense fortunes, to eviscerate our limited social safety net, to eliminate corporate regulations, and to turn the clock back on 70 years of civil and human rights gains. A month on we find ourselves in the midst of what is politely described as a “constitutional crisis,” as Trump and his co-conspirators signal they will refuse to respect court orders that overrule their illegal and unconstitutional actions.
The chaos and calamity the Trump regime is wreaking within the United States extends beyond our borders, near and far. Counter-productively Trump and company are swinging their recking ball at the foundations of the United States’ liberal and sometimes democratic empire which has subsidized the U.S. economy for more than a century. The murder of as many as 3 million Vietnamese; NATO’s generation-long Afghanistan War; and continuing supply of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced weapons, as well as diplomatic support, for Israel’s genocidal second Palestinian Nakba, give lie to a benign U.S. led “international rules-based order.” Reinforcing the image of the Ugly American, the Trump-Musk assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development is killing innocent aid recipients around the world by denying them food and medicines. Trump’s 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, targeted primarily against China, provide an unexpected opening to the Middle Kingdom. They violate the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement and a trade agreement with Australia, signaling to the world that, like Hitler before him, Trump operates as if treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, and that the U.S.’ word is not to be trusted. This spells international chaos and economic pain for many U.S. Americans.
Trump’s needs and insistence on dominating anyone or any nation that refuses to kowtow to his demands will inevitably result in the alienation of valued and essential partners and painful isolation.
That era of liberal imperialism is over. It has been coming since the end of the Cold War, as China’s rise and that of the most influential nations of the Global South have created the still uncertain and fluid multipolar disorder. Trump and company’s “peace through strength” is a response to the United States’ relative decline and is being pursued in a nationally self-defeating sovereigntist imperial tradition.
A New York Times article explained that the early sovereigntist movement sought “not only America’s formal sovereignty… but also the traditional forms of rule to which its white, native-born leaders were accustomed… they understood international cooperation as a threat to their personal sovereignty as well that of their nations.” Sovereigntists played leading roles in the 1930s’ fascist “America First” movement and opposed creation of the United Nations, the International Court, NATO, and the World Trade Organization as infringements on U.S. sovereignty. Sovereigntists supported racist Rhodesia as a “brave little country” and defended apartheid South Africa against U.N. sanctions. The Trumpist Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proclaimed that “international organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed. They should be abandoned.”
The conservative Trump critic Bret Stephens describes the sovereigntist ideology serving as a means for “a country doing what it wants to do… an indifference to the behavior of other states, however cruel or dangerous, so long as it doesn’t impinge on us.” It means that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” In Trump’s case, we know that he despised the “rules-based order.” His former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien reported that he ”adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts.” That is to say his personal narcissistic sovereignty.
Thus, we have threats to seize Greenland and to annex Canada for minerals in order to outpace China in the technological and economic races for dominance. Panama is threatened in order to restore U.S. control over the strategically vital canal. And while the U.S. spends 3.4% of its GDP, nearly a trillion dollars, Trump has raised his demand that NATO nations increase their military spending to a staggering 5% of their GDP so that the Pentagon can concentrate its military and economic power on containing and dominating China. A fool’s errand.
Some governments, for example Poland, Japan, and Colombia, are kowtowing to Trump’s crude demands. Others—including Denmark, France, and even Germany, at least in the face of Trump’s Greenland demands—are insisting on respect for their national sovereignty. We can expect linkages as Trump goes beyond his threat to encourage Russia to invade nations that don’t meet his exorbitant military spending demands with tariff threats and other demands for those who fail to kowtow to the new lord’s orders.
Trump has yet to fully reveal his military and diplomatic approaches to Europe and Russia. In his return to power, Trump seems less smitten by Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the Russian autocrat is “destroying Russia.” Trump has threatened further and useless sanctions against Moscow and increases in military support for Kyiv if Moscow refuses to come to the negotiating table on Trump’s terms. He has also offered continued military support for Ukraine in exchange for significant quantities of rare earth minerals needed for the industrial and the technological arms race with China. The Ukraine War, of course, is not only for control of that long-tormented borderland. On all sides, it is being fought to shape and define the Post-Post-Cold War’s European order and strategic architecture.
At the same time, Trump, who believe it or not is driven in part by his Nobel Peace Prize ambitions, as well as his transactional way of being, could attempt to negotiate a comprehensive grand bargain with Putin over the heads Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ukraine, and European leaders. It could include everything from the future of Ukraine to conventional and nuclear weapons in Europe, and to whatever follows the expiration of the New START nuclear treaty in February 2026.
On the other hand, if Putin is not willing to accommodate Trump’s demands we could see renewed commitments to the Biden administration’s goal of dealing Moscow a “strategic defeat,” and to the new Cold War.
On the international economic front, Trump’s tariff threats are more than temper tantrums. Rejection of the 70-year-old liberal imperial disorder includes the ambition of replacing the Bretton Woods-WTO systems with what Trump’s former Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer terms a “new American trade system.”
Lighthizer, who ignited the economic warfare with China during Trump’s first term, recently wrote that “countries with democratic governments [as of this now applies to the U.S. -jg!] and mostly free economies should come together to create a new trade regime. This system could enforce balance by having two tiers of tariffs.” Punitive tariffs would target “nondemocratic countries as well as those that insist on beggar-thy-neighbor aggressive industrial policies to run large surpluses.” Those within his new regime “would pay lower tariffs and they could be adjusted over time to ensure balance.”
The imperial naivety and ambition of this strategy brings to mind the disastrous Bush-Cheney-Abrams belief that with “shock and awe” that they could simultaneously export democracy to Iraq and seize control of the “sea of oil” on which that nation floats.
By definition, the narcissism of admiring one’s reflection in the mirror and insisting on personal or national sovereignty at the expense of others means ignoring the needs and agency of others. Trump’s needs and insistence on dominating anyone or any nation that refuses to kowtow to his demands will inevitably result in the alienation of valued and essential partners and painful isolation. Just as no man is an island, neither is a nation. As Trump transforms the United States into pariah nation, he will be accelerating the nation’s decline, generating increasingly dangerous domestic and international turmoil and insecurity.
We saw that with the end of the Cold War, based on common security and win-win diplomacy, there are alternatives that will enhance our personal and national security. In the words of the Jewish sage Hillel, “If not now, when? If not me [us] who?” We and the world’s nations are not powerless. U.S. and international strategies that target Trump’s stock market Achilles heel or ultimately a general strike could discipline this most undisciplined and dangerous despot.
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Constitutional Crisis Intensifies as Lawless Trump Ignores Federal Court Orders
"We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now," said one legal expert. "We never have seen anything like this."
Feb 11, 2025
The Trump administration's defiance of court orders that threaten to hamper the president and unelected billionaire Elon Musk's assault on federal agencies and basic rights has legal experts and other observers warning of a perilous new phase in the United States' rolling constitutional crisis.
On Monday, the Revolving Door Project (RDP) launched an effort to track the Trump administration's refusal to comply with orders from the federal judiciary and detail the impact that obstinance is having across the country.
The watchdog group pointed to several specific examples, including the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to "disperse already-awarded grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, in apparent defiance of" federal judges' orders against the Trump administration's sweeping funding freeze.
"NOTHING is more important than civil society pressuring judges to have a spine in the face of Musk and Trump's intransigence," Jeff Hauser, RDP's executive director, wrote on social media late Monday. "Judicial orders must be enforced!"
Journalists Judd Legum and Noel Sims highlighted another example on Tuesday, noting that the administration is "prohibiting National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff from issuing virtually all grant funding" despite two federal court injunctions against the freeze.
David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told Legum and Sims that the Trump administration is "in contempt of court," calling the continued freeze on NIH grants "completely unlawful."
"The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent."
Super is among a growing number of legal experts sounding the alarm about the nation's descent into a full-blown constitutional emergency.
"We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now," Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, toldThe New York Times late last week. "There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this."
"Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis," Chemerinsky added.
Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have levied criticism at the federal judiciary in recent days as it has put up roadblocks that have hindered the new administration's ability to lawlessly impose its will.
"Certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop," Trump wrote in a social media post early Tuesday, just days after Musk floated allowing "elected bodies" to terminate "the worst 1% of appointed judges."
Federal courts have proven a significant obstacle to the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), whose efforts to take over critical systems and seize highly sensitive data have sparked high-stakes legal battles.
In a statement on Monday, American Bar Association (ABA) president William Bay noted that "in the last 21 days, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed alleging that the administration's actions violate the rule of law and are contrary to the Constitution or laws of the United States."
"The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore," said Bay. "These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law."
"We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law," he added. "It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less."
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'Full-Scale Authoritarian Takeover': Vance and Musk Take Aim at Federal Judges
"We must push back hard against these next leaps down the pathway to tyranny," said one Democratic in the House.
Feb 09, 2025
Facing a string of judicial rulings in recent days that have struck down or at least put on hold a variety of efforts by the Trump administration that appeared to overstep its executive authority, both Vice President JD Vance and billionaire oligarch Elon Musk on Sunday took aim at the power of judges by saying their powers—despite being the recognized co-equal and third branch of the U.S. government—should be curbed or disregarded.
"If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal," Vance tweeted Sunday morning, in a legally dubious post. Despite the claim, military generals are not free—either from laws of war, international human rights treaties, or chains of command—to do anything they please.
"If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal," Vance continued. "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."
Shortly before Vance's tweet, Musk, the world's richest person and who has been tasked by Trump to run the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) effort to dismantle key government agencies and programs, floated the idea that life-time appointed judges should, based on a set annual quota, be subject to termination by the political party in power. Currently, both chambers of Congress and the White House are controlled by Republicans.
"I'd like to propose that the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year," Musk said on Sunday morning. "This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent."
Over the last week, federal judges have intervened to block DOGE efforts to have unfettered access to a key Treasury Department payment system and also blocked the so-called "Fork in the Road" offer to federal workers put forth by the unsanctioned Musk-led team at DOGE.
After a U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer responded to a suit brought by 18 state attorneys general on Friday by blocking DOGE access to the Treasury system, Musk retweeted a message suggesting that the best thing to do might be to ignore the order.
Musk also called for Engelmayer's specific ouster. "A corrupt judge protecting corruption," Musk tweeted. "He needs to be impeached NOW!"
Outside critics, Democratic lawmakers, and legal experts responded with grave concern to the comments about judges by both Vance and Musk, arguably President Donald Trump's closest advisors.
After initial litigation losses for their illegal actions, Trump Admin now begins intimidating/attacking judiciary. Vance—ignore court orders. Musk—impeach “corrupt” judges. We must pushback hard against these next leaps down the pathway to tyranny.
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— Rep. Lloyd Doggett (@doggett.house.gov) February 9, 2025 at 3:19 PM
In an email to CNBC on Sunday, Duke Law School professor Marin K. Levy explained that the state attorneys general and the judge in the Treasury case "were all acting well within their authority. What we saw here was the judicial system working as it is supposed to."
Mondaire Jones, a former congressman from New York and now a commissioner on the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights, characterized Vance's comments as being part of the Trump-led "fascist movement in American politics."
In a Sunday morning appearance on "Face the Nation," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said what the nation is witnessing with Trump allowing people like Musk to run roughshod over federal agencies—and now attacking the judiciary—is nothing short of a "constitutional crisis" and "full-scale authoritarian takeover."
"We are seeing an executive branch," said Omar, "that has decided they are no longer going to abide by the Constitution in honoring Congress' role in the creation of the agencies, in their role deciding where money is allocated. And so the only recourse we have—since our congressional leadership, the Speaker [of the House Mike Johnson], will not stop the executive—is through the judiciary."
We're witnessing a constitutional crisis and a full-scale authoritarian takeover.
The executive branch has decided they’re no longer going to abide by the Constitution.
However, our judiciary system is fighting back. One-by-one, we will stop this illegal government takeover. pic.twitter.com/MMFgrLlXVV
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) February 9, 2025
"When you think about the checks and balances we have," Omar continued, "the courts are the only recourse we have at the moment. And when we talk about the illegality of what the executive branch is doing, we have seen every single executive order that has been challenged in the court we found to be illegal."
Omar said that fact, hopefully, will offer some solace to the "American people that our courts are working as they should. The checks and balances are working, but what is not working is the way the executive is behaving and the congressional leadership that is failing the American people."
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