Power Play Endgame
Trump Seizes Emergency Powers, Defies Courts, Attacks Lawyers and Judges. We're Reaching a Pivotal Point in Defending Our Democracy
We may be entering the endgame with Trump and his dictatorial desires. Next we’ll find out whether our democratic institutions and the rule of law are strong enough to withstand his relentless attacks.
Trump quickly picked all the low-hanging fruit to feed his authoritarian hunger: issuing dozens of orders that push the limits of presidential power, threatening our allies and his enemies, stacking government with loyalist bullies, taking control of cultural institutions, and demanding feckless fealty from Republicans in Congress.
But the courts have repeatedly blocked Trump’s (and unelected co-President Elon Musk’s) most consequential actions. So the Trump administration has started to openly defy court orders and resort to ever-more-extreme and legally dicey power plays.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 for the first time since FDR used it to imprison Japanese Americans at the start of World War II, using this rarely used wartime power to quickly deport hundreds of Venezuelans — and openly defy a federal judge’s order blocking its use.
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think,” Trump bellicose border czar Tom Homan told Fox News in response, promising “another flight every day.”
Homan, Trump and Musk backed up that blatantly unconstitutional power grab by threatening to impeach this judge and others who rule against them. The threats prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a tepid yet significant rebuke: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
But Trump is so hostile to the rule of law, and so intent on weaponizing the justice system against his enemies, that he’s taking aggressive actions against at least three major law firms that have been involved in actions against him. That sent an authoritarian chill through the entire legal community — and really, anyone concerned with the state of our constitutional democracy.
At a moment when the courts and the rule of law seem to be the only things standing between us and Trump-as-dictator-for-life, this is scary stuff.
Emergency Powers: Here’s a pop quiz for SEN readers: the U.S. Constitution gives which branch of government the power to levy tariffs on foreign imports?
Based on recent current events, some people might guess the executive branch. After all, Trump has been unilaterally levying and then revoking tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada, and other nations since Day One of this term.
But the answer is actually the legislative branch, Congress. Article I of the constitution gives Congress the “power to lay and collect…duties, imposts and excises” — aka tariffs — and to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.”
But Congress has also passed laws delegating to the president emergency powers to levy tariffs under certain circumstances, such as a national emergency. That’s why Trump keeps prattling on about fentanyl and declaring its import a national emergency — despite fentanyl overdose deaths dropping 30 percent in the last two years.
Trump is using fentanyl as a pretext to claim more presidential powers, which rightly belong to Congress, and to levy tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, supposedly for allowing the drug into our country, even though the amount seized coming from Canada is minuscule.
Now Trump is promising to levy across-the-board tariffs on a broader range of countries starting April 2 — once again pushing the limits on presidential power using an expansion interpretation the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
But Republicans in Congress have completely given up their constitutional powers and any sense of oversight or restraint. Whether it’s because they’re scared of Trump, Musk and the mobs they can summon — as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) said this week — or they’re just down with dictatorship, who knows.
Trump has claimed wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act, even though our country is not at war. Trump had Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil arrested for helping organize pro-Palestinian protests and is trying to deport him, even though Khalil is a legal resident married to an American, using obscure emergency provision buried deep in immigration law.
And if Trump continues to lose court cases, and if his popularity continue to fall and he starts getting desperate, who knows how far he’s willing to go and what powers he’ll claim. Martial law? Suspension of habeas corpus? U.S. troops occupying U.S. cities for the first time?
It’s a terrible time for Democrats to be so feckless and divided.
Backlash and Support: Last week’s Scribe’s End Notes — about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports and the divisive politics surrounding it — blew up when I posted it on Facebook, quickly generating more than 220 comments and counting.
The reactions illustrated and reinforced many of the points I made in my essay, for good or ill.
Most people’s reactions were supportive: agreeing with what I wrote, thanking me for raising an important discussion, saying the Democratic Party should allow a broader range of opinions, and condemning those who attack and shame people with different views. I also got several private messages from people afraid to say so publicly.
But the aggressive enforcement of liberal orthodoxy was on vivid display as well. I was told to shut up; called transphobic, ignorant, naive and over-entitled; told cisgender men can’t express an opinion on this issue; accused of helping turn over the entire trans community to the Nazis; and generally belittled and condemned.
Mind you, I wasn’t even taking a strong stand on the question of whether transgender women should be allowed to compete in professional or collegiate women’s sports. I was simply saying the left should tolerate different opinions on the subject and maybe coalesce around a more nuanced stance, such as regulation by sports governing bodies, in order to defuse the right’s effective weaponization of the issue.
Now, I probably invited some criticism by leading with Gov. Gavin Newsom's changed stance on the issue, made during his new podcast, which has been widely condemned for his obsequious approach to the most hateful and divisive figures from MAGA world, from Charlie Kirk to Steve Bannon. I criticized Newsom in my essay, but I also used a big photo of him, so I understand why people thought I was supporting Newsom and his troubling new tactics.
On the whole, I think my essay generated a good online discussion that illustrated key points that I raised, so I invite you to check on that discussion on Facebook and weigh in if you’d like. And I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks about how the enforcement of liberal orthodoxy by a small group of activists and interest groups is holding back Democrats and the broader left.
Flashback: After engaging with some many people on this issue — and hearing criticisms rooted in identity politics — I think it’s worth revisiting something I wrote in one of the first Scribe’s End Notes way back in January 2024, which lays out a fear I had that has sadly come true, but which Democrats and the left are still grappling with:
False Identity: For several years now, I’ve been reluctant to engage in the public square. As a big personality and member of historically dominant groups, I felt like I should just shut the fuck up for awhile. Let other folks hang onto the talking stick while I just tried to be a good ally.
I’m a white, straight, cisgender male; raised in the middle class, and someone very sympathetic to the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. At my last job, I did weeks worth of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) trainings — much of it illuminating and powerful, some of it tedious and repetitive, like many lessons in life.
Particularly after spending over 30 years as a journalist and media spokesperson, I was content to let others speak and just listen for awhile. Now, as an opinionated, well-read guy with lots of journalistic experience, particularly in California, this wasn’t easy. I got lots to say, believe me.
But a growing sense of doom and disappointment in humanity — fueled by Trumpism, climate inaction, pandemic-induced dysfunctions, and rising illiberalism — made me feel a little guilty about just sitting on the sidelines as this ugly endgame played out.
A couple things have prompted me to suit up and get back in the game. One is the sheer momentousness of 2024, a pivotal year for people and the planet. Maybe mine is just one more voice in the cacophonous roar, but I can’t stay silent as the crazy train wrecks the country. The other is a couple books I just read and the clear imperatives they lay out.
I wasn’t really familiar with political scientist Yascha Mounk until September when I read his “How to Argue Against Identity Politics Without Turning Into a Reactionary” in the Sunday opinion section of The New York Times. It was a revelation, a validation of my growing concerns, and a call to help correct the fatal errors of the progressive movement and the reactionary backlash its current tactics are provoking.
So I read his book on the topic, The Identity Trap, and became even more convinced of the dangers of embracing what Mounk calls the “identity synthesis,” which seeks to supplant the universalist values of classic liberalism with analysis and advocacy based on race, gender and other cultural identifiers and the societal debt owed to historically marginalized groups.
The reason this is so dangerous, and so important, is the belief of progressives like me that systemic racism and sexism are real and present dangers. We’re repulsed by the crass nativism and misogyny of the MAGA movement. So we’ve accepted and embraced the rapid ascent of identity politics within the Democratic Party and other mainstream institutions, including the academic and nonprofit worlds, even if we have doubts about its logic and implications and concerns about the galvanizing effect it’s had on reactionaries and conservatives.
The credo’s call to always defer to representatives of identity groups isn’t always the best strategy. Indigenous groups don’t need to be centered on every environmental issue. Making everyone state their pronouns irritates many folks and elevates gender in ways that don’t actually help the trans community. LatinX isn’t a label most Latinos like, nor do many even like being singled out as a distinct race. Black activists who pushed the “defund police” and “abolish police” slogans during the BLM protests maybe needed a little more pushback so we weren’t all saddled with such a bad slogan. Even most Black voters rejected that call.
All that misguided lefty nonsense is part of the reason why Trump actually gained electoral ground will all minority groups in the 2020 election, despite being a racist piece-of-shit. The point is, none of these groups are monolithic, and everyone has something to offer this year.
But now, I feel that balance tipping. We need to speak up in favor of the classic liberal values that Western democracies were founded on rather than ditching them because society hasn’t fully lived up to them yet. We must be able to critique the identity politics of our allies when they go too far and the noxious reactionary politics that have subsumed the Republican Party. We can and must do both.
We’re now living through The Great Experiment, Mounk’s previous book that I also just read and appreciated, of figuring out how to make a multi-cultural democracy work and not fail, as so many have before. The key to success isn’t essentializing our differences; it’s essentializing our commonalities.
Because we’re teetering on the brink, approaching The End, if we can’t figure out how to develop a more just and equitable society. And this tough, complex job is going to take as many of us as possible.
As Ozzy sang aboard the crazy train, “Maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.”