It doesn’t matter that Republican members of Congress, the President and his cabinet have shattered their oaths to be faithful to the Constitution and are desecrating the tenets on which our country is built. That’s because Republicans won’t fulfill their Constitutional obligation to impeach or stop the President and his cabinet from wreaking havoc on the country.
The Constitution requires that “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment and … Conviction of .… Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
The Constitution also establishes three independent branches of government to balance and provide checks on each other to stop them from abusing or exceeding their powers and to prevent one branch from dominating the entire government, and each branch of government has a duty to act as a check on the other branches.
Congressional Republicans have not only refused to limit or redress: Trump’s 39 overreaching executive orders, his multiple violations of court orders in attempt to usurp the powers of the judiciary and the entire government, his blatant violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and the Constitutional due process owed to illegally deported residents to the Western Hemisphere’s most gruesome prison.
Even worse, Senate Republicans have enabled the horrendous violations by Trump and his cabinet by confirming the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet in the country’s history. They knowingly: risked spreading disease and increasing death rates across the country, converted the FBI to Trump’s personal retribution army, trashed the world’s trust in America, jeopardized national security by leaking classified information to the press and family, and installed a pro-Putin Secretary of Homeland Security.
The Constitution requires that such behavior be accountable to and stymied by the legislature. But when elected members of Congress prioritize their loyalty to their party, to interest groups and to keeping their seats ahead of the country they serve, they sabotage the Constitution.
The Constitution’s checks and balances structure also relies on the judiciary to check the power of the President. Trump has issued 39 executive orders that were blocked by the courts and violated the court orders that blocked them, all of which have reached or on their way to the Supreme Court. That is where the check on the executive branch becomes more complicated than necessary and gives Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders more air than they deserve.
But the Court’s majority has enabled Trump’s egregious behavior. For example, it distorted the Constitution to give Trump unprecedented and far-reaching immunity from criminal prosecution by holding that the courts cannot interfere with powers that the Constitution has given exclusively to the president, meaning that the president may legally sell pardons for bribes without court interference.
The Supreme Court majority also delayed Trump’s criminal trials until after the 2024 election. By contrast, it took the Roberts’s court just 16 days to decide Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to make Republican George W. Bush President in his legal contest with Al Gore.
So it’s not surprising that the Supreme Court slowed down the lower courts ability to hold the Trump administration in civil contempt which would allow it to fine or jail its members.
A District Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States. On appeal, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration only “to facilitate” Garcia’s return and omitted the word “effectuate.” It also held that the meaning of “effectuate” in the District Courts opinion was unclear and “may exceed its authority,” and warned the District Court to give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” The Supreme Court then delayed sanctioning the violators by remanding the case to the District Court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate.”
Trump then seized on the Supreme Court’s language by arguing that it instructed the District Court “to respect the president’s authority … to manage foreign policy,” as he kept on thumbing his nose at the entire Judiciary.
Had the Supreme Court just affirmed the District Court’s decision, the Courts that issued the orders Trump ignored would have been free to pursue discovery and impose sanctions, including jail, on the violators, which would maintain the Judiciary’s independence and fulfill its Constitutional obligation to check the excesses of the executive branch.
The notion that the legislature can impeach Trump, and that the judiciary can put members of his administration in jail, is too frequently met with the response, “Oh that will never happen.” That’s tantamount to giving up on saving our country from the total destruction of the freedoms and economy that allowed America to become the envy of the world. It’s time!
