Soul of the Nation

By snubbing his nose at the federal judiciary, President Trump invites a constitutional crisis that sows chaos and accelerates the slide toward an autocracy.

Image by Fatih, Adobe Stock

When I was far younger, the police in Cape Girardeau, Mo., arrested me and some friends for making too much noise at a party celebrating an upcoming wedding. I’ll never forget the words of one of the officers who hauled a youthful me and my friends into jail. I protested that I didn’t think we had done anything wrong and would have quieted down if only he had warned us.

“Ignorance ain’t no excuse for breaking the law,” the officer told me as he shoved me into a cell where I would spend the next 24 hours. Eventually, I was rescued by a stunning female bondsman from my hometown of St. Louis. She sauntered into the police station wearing a sultry black dress and a wide-brimmed hat. She wowed the local cops and plopped down the money to spring me. But the officer’s pungent words about breaking the law still linger in my mind all these years later.

The White House, in effect, has received a similar warning after disregarding a federal judge’s order to temporarily stop the deportation of over 200 individuals without court hearings on the legal merits of the administration’s actions.

The volatile politics surrounding immigration overshadow the escalating conflict involving U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg’s order. But it boils down to a principle as simple as the admonishment given to me by that cop many years ago. You can’t break the law even if you think you are not doing anything wrong.

The story about the fight between the judge and the White House involves principles that are far more important than a fine and a night in jail. President Donald Trump and his cohorts argue that the deportees are members of a violent gang that has no place in America. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the legality of the action.

After presiding over a court hearing with lawyers representing both sides, Judge Boasberg ruled that the administration’s hasty and secretive maneuvers raised constitutional concerns. He temporarily barred the evictions for fourteen days and ordered the deportees to be returned to America. Embracing dubious legal justifications, the Trump administration ignored the order and proceeded with the deportations. The president even disparaged Judge Boasberg and publicly suggested he should be impeached.

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts took a rare step to rebuke Trump: “For over two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements over judicial rulings.” Robert says the judicial system has an appeals process that should be used to object to a judge’s ruling. His statement highlighted his concern about the administration’s escalating attacks on judicial independence as tensions rise between the judiciary and the Trump administration over adherence to court orders.

However, there’s a bigger story at play. Whether the White House acknowledges it or not, we live in a nation governed by laws and a constitution that requires the government to adhere to fair and established procedures before depriving any individual of life, liberty, or property. This principle is known as due process, and it is enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Trump’s opponents argue the administration didn’t give the suspects their day in court, where the legal merits of the controversy could be argued in public.

Ignoring a judge’s ruling on such blatant violations of these principles invites chaos and hastens a slide into autocracy and constitutional crisis that would challenge the soul of the nation. The facts indicate that America has embarked upon this path.

There are plenty of examples of the administration’s autocratic ways. The president consistently attacks a free press, manifested in its provocative relations with the White House press corps and the relentless attacks on the media orchestrated by Trump and his alter ego, Elon Musk. In his new book, "Murder the Truth," David Enrich, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, convincingly argues that the administration’s hostility to the media is part of a conservative strategy to weaken or gut the First Amendment, a cornerstone of American Democracy,

The administration’s aggressive orders to eliminate any traces of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout the government amount to heavy-handed censorship right out of the autocrat’s playbook.

Then there’s Elon Musk and his White House enabler wiping out entire federal agencies government simply because they don’t like them, dubiously arguing that they have a mandate from voters to take a chainsaw to the Washington bureaucracy. Trump’s election falls short of any mandate, and his actions jeopardize the balance of power carefully crafted by the nation’s founding fathers. No one elected Elon Musk to any office. The billionaire was appointed to run a department that’s not a department by a power-grabbing president thankful for the billions his supplicant poured into his coffers.

The most pressing autocratic threat of a constitutional crisis, though, involves the durability of the courts to act as a check on the power of the White House. President Trump is well-known for attacking judges who rule against him in court and prosecutors who haul him into the dock to face charges of illegal activities. It was one thing for Trump to launch such broadsides when he was a candidate. It is another for him to use the office of the Presidency to undermine the rule of law.

What keeps judicial scholars up at night is the real prospect that a case like Judge Boasberg’s will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, a likely prospect. What will happen if the court rules against President Trump and his minions and they ignore the court’s order?

Usually, Congress is supposed to serve as a check on the President’s power. Congress could try to impeach a president who defies an order from the highest court. Fat chance that the Republican-controlled House and Senate would take such a step. They all fear losing their jobs if Trump and Musk launch and bankroll a campaign against them. That leaves the judiciary as the only game in town. But what would happen if Trump treated one of the court’s rulings the same way he handled orders issued by Judge Boasberg, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama?

The high court doesn’t have a police department that the justices could send to arrest the president for violating the law like the police did to me in southern Missouri. The FBI, the nation's closest thing to a federal police department, is led by Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who will no doubt take his orders from the president.

The high court doesn’t have a lawyer and would lack legal representation. America has a chief legal officer, Attorney General Pam Bondi, another Trump loyalist. However, she has already sided with the president in the dispute concerning the deportation of the alleged Venezuelan gang members at the center of Judge Boasberg’s case. She described the judge’s temporary injunction preventing the deportation as an overreach of presidential powers.

Suppose the nation loses the system of checks and balances on White House power that has been established since its founding. In that case, America can no longer be regarded as a legitimate democracy.

The only thing that could stop the march toward autocracy is public outrage over the recession that Trump and his allies are orchestrating to reshape the economy into one where the tax burden falls more heavily on the lower and middle classes while exempting the wealthy.

The only court that can decide this case is the court of public opinion.

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