Trump's Authoritarianism

 

…Trump’s aspirations to authoritarianism are showing in the announcement that there will be a military parade on Trump’s 79th birthday, June 14, which coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’s establishment of the Continental Army in 1775. About 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, and 50 helicopters will proceed from near the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, to the National Mall at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

Trump’s attempt to empower loyalists showed today in the news that the Trump administration has reached a settlement in principle with the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump loyalist who was shot by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd as she tried to breach the House Speaker’s Lobby on January 6, 2021. The right-wing Judicial Watch organization had filed a $30 million civil suit on behalf of Babbitt’s estate. A 2021 internal review determined that Byrd saved lives.

The administration’s hunkering down in right-wing ideology showed as well in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s public attack on U.S. ally Germany for declaring the German right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist party that goes against Germany’s “free democratic order.” That designation is the result of a three-year investigation. It allows the government more leeway in monitoring the AfD.

Both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire White House advisor Elon Musk supported the AfD and backed it in a recent election. Rubio took AfD’s side today, writing on social media that that new designation was “tyranny in disguise.” He attacked the current government and urged Germany to “reverse course.”

The German Foreign Office responded publicly. “This is democracy. The decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.”

It says something about the Trump administration that the German government is lecturing the U.S. government about the dangers of right-wing extremism.

Molly Beck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan spoke to reporters yesterday, threatening Wisconsin governor Tony Evers with arrest after the governor issued a memo to state workers directing them to check with a lawyer before turning over documents or other items to officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Evers said Republicans were mischaracterizing his memo, which did not direct anyone to break the law.

"We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official, or even everyday American citizens who have broken no laws, committed no crimes and done nothing wrong," Evers said. "And as disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump administration, I'm not afraid."

Yesterday, at an event for judges, jurists, and lawyers, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke out against the attacks on judges currently plaguing the country. Judge Esther Salas, whose son Daniel was murdered by a man who came to their house looking for her, has been calling out the recent tactic of sending pizzas to the homes of judges or their children, making the point that right-wing opponents know where they live. Furthering their attempt at intimidation, the perpetrators have been using the name of Judge Salas’s son.

Judge Jackson began her remarks yesterday by saying she wanted to address “the elephant in the room”: the attacks on our legal system. Such attacks are not just on individuals, she said, but undermine the system itself. “Attacks on judicial independence is how countries that are not free, not fair, and not rule of law oriented, operate,” she said, and she told her colleagues: “I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service.” According to Laura N. Pérez Sánchez of the New York Times, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

At least some of the administration’s intimidation is an attempt to cow opponents. It does not appear to be working.

Yesterday, about 1,500 lawyers and their allies packed the plaza outside Manhattan’s federal courthouse to defend the rule of law. According to Santul Nerkar of the New York Times, they held up pocket Constitutions, reaffirmed their oath to support and defend the Constitution, and chanted: “The rule of law protects us all. Without it we will surely fall.”

Speaking in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., constitutional law scholar and U.S. representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said, “The whole country needs a constitutional refresher.” He recited the Preamble of the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

On March 6, Trump issued an executive order attacking the law firm Perkins Coie, which has represented high-profile Democratic individuals and causes, by barring the federal government from hiring the firm, suspending the security clearances of individuals working for it, barring its lawyers from entering federal office buildings, and preparing to end government contracts with any of its clients.

Rather than back down, as several other firms did, Perkins Coie sued the next day. Today, Judge Beryl Howell permanently barred any enforcement of Trump's executive order, saying it “violates the Constitution and is thus null and void.” In her opinion, Howell noted that “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.” Trump’s executive order violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of right to counsel.

She pointed out that the fair and impartial administration of justice has been part of the U.S. since John Adams “made the singularly unpopular decision to represent eight British soldiers charged with murder for their roles in the Boston Massacre.” “I had no hesitation,” Adams wrote in his diary, because “the Bar ought…to be independent and impartial at all Times And in every Circumstance.”

Today, Riley Board and Dylan Tusinski of the Portland Press Herald reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state of Maine reached a settlement in the state’s lawsuit against the Trump administration after it froze funding to Maine education. The administration claimed the state violates the law because it allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams. 

Governor Janet Mills said she was following state and federal law and that Trump could not change the law by fiat. Maine attorney general Aaron Frey said the state had no choice but to sue in order to force the USDA to follow the law. The settlement restores the funding and establishes that the administration will go through the legally required process to pursue its policy.

When Trump tried to bully Governor Mills over the issue at a White House meeting in February, she told him, “See you in court.” Today she commented: “It’s good to feel a victory like this. I stood in the White House and when confronted by the president of the United States, I told him I’d see him in court. Well, we did see him in court, and we won.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched a different lawsuit against the Maine Department of Education that would pull funding primarily from poorer students and students with disabilities. “That’s a separate complaint they filed a few weeks ago, it’s only a one-page complaint that cites no authority, no case, no law,” Mills said. “We’ll see them in court on that one as well.”

Finally, tonight, Trump’s apparent determination to dominate the news and to project an image of leadership is overlapping with his increasingly erratic behavior. After suggesting on Tuesday that he’d like to be Pope, tonight the president of the United States posted on his social media site an AI-generated image of himself wearing papal robes and a miter.

—Heather Cox Richardson