Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno on Oct. 11, 2024.
Donald Trump doesn’t care about what the law has to say. But at least before last week, he was a private citizen with limited power.
Now he has the most powerful job in America and his first actions have shown nothing but contempt for the law, acting like a dictator whose power is unconstrained, one whose every will must be obeyed no matter the consequences.
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Take, for example, his State Department’s order to stop PEPFAR funding. PEPFAR is an enormously successful program that has provided HIV/AIDS medications to millions of people in Africa for decades. It is authorized by Congress; the president isn’t allowed to just stop disbursing this money.
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But that’s exactly what he did, with his administration telling “organizations in other countries to stop disbursing HIV medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics.”
People don’t take HIV medications for fun. If they stop taking them, they will eventually die. Depending on how long it takes to get the Trump administration to follow the law here, millions could end up dead.
Trump has already broken the law several times in the few days he’s been back in the White House. He didn’t just stop foreign aid, he also ordered a freeze on domestic federal grants and loans starting today so that his administration could run an ideological review of the spending.
That federal money, like the PEPFAR money, was allocated by Congress, which is a coequal branch of the federal government, not an advisory committee whose decisions can legally be ignored. The freeze on the funds will cause widespread chaos for healthcare and educational organizations, among others, that are already struggling, and states have already said that they’re going to sue.
Trump also fired a slew of inspectors general who he’s not allowed to fire because they are meant to keep a check on his administration’s corruption and waste. Of course, that might be the exact reason he fired them.
He illegally fired a Democratic member of the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and a prosecutor associated with the NLRB, crippling the agency, which benefits the wealthy people who own companies at the expense of workers’ rights.
He ordered the military to fire transgender servicemembers, explicitly because he believes the negative stereotype that trans people can’t be “honorable, truthful, and disciplined.” He didn’t even try to present an objective reason to ban trans people from the military as he did in his first term, which is what the due process under the law requires when taking away people’s rights. That is, he didn’t even try to put on some window dressing and pretend to follow the law here; he has that much contempt for the law.
Trump is a convicted felon. Before he was elected last year, he was facing charges in three other, separate cases covering just a few of his allegedly illegal activities over the last few years. He has lived his life like he’s above the law, because he’s arrogant enough to believe that the law just can’t constrain him.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that one of his very first acts in office last week had nothing to do with helping the American people and everything to do with showing the middle finger to the very idea that criminals should face consequences. He pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 1,500 people, a group that included pedophiles, violent criminals, and even a drug kingpin who destroyed an untold number of lives.
Why did Trump release the drug guy? Trump literally said that he’s mad that he faced prosecution for his illegal actions, so he wanted to get back at prosecutors: “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me.”
So if someone you know gets attacked by one of these criminals Trump released, you can rest assured that Trump felt some fleeting satisfaction in his desire to make others pay for his own humiliation at being told that he had to follow the law like a peasant.
And this isn’t even getting into his attempt to start a war with NATO ally and EU member state Denmark over Greenland. Trump has said that military action is on the table in his idiotic attempt at territorial expansion, military action that will cost people’s lives if he decides to invade. Wars of conquest have killed so many people in past centuries, and the U.S. should be maintaining the modern-day taboo on such wars, not alienating its allies because Trump thinks he can just take whatever he wants, everyone else be damned.
Needless to say, if former President Joe Biden had done any of this, Republicans in Congress would be calling for impeachment. Trump did all of this and what do Congressional Democrats say? They are trying to focus on the economy.
The country is in a crisis right now. Our only hope is that the courts will tell Trump he has to follow the law and that he’ll listen to the courts. Much of what Trump is doing is very unpopular, and Democrats should already be making the case for impeachment. (And, yes, I know that impeachment won’t go anywhere as long as Republicans control the House and Senate and remain enthralled with Trump. But someone should at least be talking about it!)
Since the election in November, I have heard way too many people say, “We will get through this” and “We have survived hard times before and we’ll get through it this time as well.”
Well, that’s not true. A lot of people will die. The people dependent on PEPFAR funding will die if they have to wait too long for it. Some of the people who need clinics funded by federal grants will die if they have to delay health care. We owe it to those among us who are the most vulnerable to push back constantly against everything Trump does.
The law didn’t just stop existing when Trump took the oath of office last week. And more people need to start acting like it instead of acquiescing to him as if he really were elected dictator.
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