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constitutional crisis
Unchecked Waters: The Constitutional Crisis of Trump’s Venezuela Oil Blockade
A naval blockade—regardless of whether it is met with armed resistance—qualifies under both domestic and international law as a use of force.
Dec 20, 2025
On 16 December, 2025, President Donald Trump announced what he called a “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Delivered via his personal media platform, the statement was sweeping in its implications. Trump declared that Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” and he made clear this would not end until all Venezuelan “oil, land, and other assets” were returned to the United States. But beneath the dramatic language lies a far more dangerous truth: this action marks a breach of US constitutional limits, a perilous expansion of executive authority, and a break with both legal precedent and historical norms of dispute resolution.
At its core, this naval blockade—undeclared, unauthorized, and now operational—poses a direct challenge to the War Powers Resolution, a congressional statute designed specifically to prevent precisely this kind of unilateral military escalation. While prior administrations have used sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and limited enforcement actions to manage foreign resource disputes, President Trump’s move replaces law with coercion, and diplomacy with force.
The Constitutional Line That Has Been Crossed
Under Article I of the US Constitution, the power to declare war, or to authorize acts tantamount to war, lies exclusively with Congress. While Article II grants the President authority as Commander-in-Chief, it does not permit sustained, coercive military operations absent legislative consent. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted to enforce this distinction, requiring the President to seek congressional authorization for any use of armed forces likely to involve hostilities or imminent risk thereof.
The blockade announced by President Trump is not merely a foreign policy maneuver; it is a constitutional violation in motion.
A naval blockade—regardless of whether it is met with armed resistance—qualifies under both domestic and international law as a use of force. It is, by nature, confrontational, involving the assertion of control over international waters and the denial of access to maritime commerce by a sovereign state. As such, the blockade announced by President Trump is not merely a foreign policy maneuver; it is a constitutional violation in motion.
The Fallacy of “Stolen Oil”: A Historical and Legal Fiction
Trump’s central justification for the blockade—that Venezuela “stole” American oil—is not supported by historical fact or legal doctrine. Venezuela’s oil sector was nationalized in 1976, with the creation of the state company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Over the years, foreign firms—including US giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips—were permitted to operate under negotiated terms. In the early 2000s, Venezuela reasserted control over key assets, converting foreign-controlled projects into joint ventures in which the state held majority ownership.
These actions were not acts of piracy, but sovereign decisions—ones that fall well within Venezuela’s rights under international law. The resulting disputes were not settled by force, but through arbitration and negotiation. Indeed, many of the affected companies sought recourse through investor-state arbitration mechanisms, challenging compensation levels or contract terms—not the fundamental legality of nationalization itself.
Even as tensions grew, the United States relied on sanctions, licensing restrictions, and diplomatic tools. Not once, in decades of resource disputes throughout Latin America—including in Mexico, Bolivia, and El Salvador—did the US resort to blockades or military coercion to assert commercial claims. The shift to force in the Venezuelan context is therefore not only unprecedented but also deeply destabilizing to the established order.
Sanctions Are Not a Blank Check
The distinction between sanctions enforcement and military action is not academic. Sanctions, as administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), regulate economic conduct—typically prohibiting certain transactions by US persons. They do not authorize armed interdiction of foreign-flagged vessels on the high seas. While isolated tanker seizures have been justified through civil forfeiture statutes—sometimes involving alleged ties to terrorism or sanctions evasion—the transition to a systematic maritime blockade is an escalation into armed coercion.
This is not simply a technical legal issue. It is a constitutional crisis in real time.
Under the War Powers Resolution and the 1980 Office of Legal Counsel opinion, even emergency military deployments must terminate within 60 days without congressional approval. The blockade’s indefinite duration, announced expansion, and linkage to political demands—such as the return of assets—place it well outside the legal bounds of executive discretion.
This is not simply a technical legal issue. It is a constitutional crisis in real time.
A Dangerous Precedent
If a President can declare and execute a naval blockade without congressional approval—based on economic grievances, political claims, or allegations of foreign misconduct—then the separation of powers itself is under siege. Today, it is Venezuela. Tomorrow, it could be any other state or region where American commercial or political interests are challenged.
Even more alarming is the potential precedent this sets for private claims to become triggers for military action. By framing a dispute over oil contracts as a matter of theft, the administration recasts a regulatory disagreement as grounds for warlike engagement. This upends international norms, threatens global maritime order, and encourages future executives to substitute force for law in matters of foreign commerce.
The Legal and Diplomatic Path Forward
It is not too late to reverse course. The solutions are neither exotic nor novel. They are grounded in law, history, and precedent:
Congress must reassert its constitutional role. Whether through resolutions like House Concurrent Resolution 64 or emergency oversight hearings, the legislative branch must enforce the War Powers Resolution and prohibit unauthorized hostilities.
The Executive must return to lawful enforcement mechanisms. This includes relying on civil forfeiture, targeted sanctions, and international arbitration—not coercive naval operations.
When the President crosses a constitutional red line and no one pushes back, it is not just a policy failure—it is a signal that the balance of powers has tilted dangerously toward autocracy.
Diplomatic engagement must be restored as the core modality. Disputes over Venezuela’s resource management must be addressed through negotiation, licensing frameworks, and international claims processes—not unilateral blockade.
For decades, the United States has held itself as a champion of a rule-based international order. That order cannot be maintained abroad if it is being subverted at home.
The High Cost of Erosion
The blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers may appear to some as a show of strength or a necessary escalation. But in truth, it is a dangerous erosion—of law, of precedent, and of constitutional governance. It represents not the defense of American interests, but the abandonment of the constitutional boundaries that define the Republic.
When the President crosses a constitutional red line and no one pushes back, it is not just a policy failure—it is a signal that the balance of powers has tilted dangerously toward autocracy. Congress must act, the courts must scrutinize, and the public must demand that power be wielded not in anger or impulse, but in accordance with the law.
Because once the executive can blockade without approval, the Constitution becomes not a safeguard, but a suggestion.
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Trump's Power Grab Proves That the US Was Never Immune From Authoritarianism
His ascent has exposed the inherent weaknesses, loopholes, and limitations that have always existed in the imperfect system created by the venerated Founding Fathers.
Oct 29, 2025
President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House isn’t just an architectural abomination; it’s symbolic of the wrecking ball he’s taken to the Constitution. Driven by his unbounded megalomania and supported by the high-tech oligarchy and a Cabinet of fawning sycophants, the 79-year-old president has precipitated a constitutional crisis and set the nation on the road to authoritarianism and democratic collapse.
Since resuming his seat behind the Resolute Desk, Trump has issued more than 360 executive orders, presidential memoranda, and presidential proclamations, effectively replacing the system of checks and balances and separation of powers that forms the backbone of the Constitution with strongman-style rule. Among his most notorious decrees are those that:
- End federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs;
- Roll back environmental protections, encourage energy exploration and production on federal lands and waters, and eliminate electric vehicle mandates;
- Impose sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities;
- Would restrict mail-in voting and impose national voter ID requirements;
- Empower the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the size of the federal workforce and dismantle the administrative state;
- Authorize mass deportations and expedite removal proceedings to secure the borders and protect the nation from a claimed “invasion;”
- Seek to end birthright citizenship by reinterpreting the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment'
- Designate antifa as a domestic terrorism organization;
- Create a “Joint National Terrorism Task Force” to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt” the work of “entities and individuals” who sponsor, fund, or “otherwise aid and abet” acts of “political violence,” including alleged attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and “anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots;”
- Federalize the National Guard and dispatch troops to American cities;
- Impound congressionally authorized funds for foreign aid and medical research;
- Levy tariffs on imported goods without congressional approval; and
- Authorize Trump to fire members of independent federal agencies without cause under the auspices of the “unitary executive theory,” which posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president.
Trump has also openly teased about running for a third term in contravention of the 22nd Amendment; secured three indictments and counting against his political critics; launched a lethal air campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific without congressional authorization and in arguable violation of international law; and demanded that the Justice Department hand him $230 million to compensate for the federal investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and for prosecuting him in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Confronted with this wreckage, most legal scholars now believe we have crossed the Rubicon. “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told the New York Times last February after Trump’s initial spate of executive orders. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
Although there is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, Princeton University professor of politics Keith Whittington has written that constitutional crises fall into two general categories: operational crises, which occur when vital political disputes can’t be resolved within the existing constitutional framework; and crises of fidelity, which happen when a major political actor no longer feels bound by constitutional norms.
The United States is beset by both calamities at once. As Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman explained on the eve of Trump’s first impeachment, Trump’s abiding lawlessness means that “we no longer have just a crisis of the presidency. We also have a breakdown in the fundamental structure of government under the Constitution. That counts as a constitutional crisis.”
Winning the fight against Trumpism requires building a new progressive politics guided by energetic leaders like Zohran Mamdani, who can articulate a small “d” democratic vision for the future.
In Trump 2.0, the dangers have multiplied, extending from the executive branch to the supine Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court. The Republican Party has been completely captured by Trump and the MAGA movement, both at the state and national levels.
The Supreme Court has similarly surrendered the last vestiges of actual judicial independence. All claims to the contrary evaporated last July with the court’s 6-3 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. The decision not only killed special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Trump, but it also altered the landscape of constitutional law, endowing presidents with absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken pursuant to their enumerated constitutional powers, such as pardoning federal offenses, and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts” undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted her Republican colleagues for inventing “an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable” concept of immunity. “The Constitution’s text contains no provision for immunity from criminal prosecution for former Presidents,” she wrote, citing the famous Watergate tapes decision of United States v. Nixon. She concluded in a sad and angry lament, “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
Trump’s ascent has exposed the inherent weaknesses, loopholes, and limitations that have always existed in the imperfect system created by the venerated Founding Fathers, who for all of their failings (slaveholding chief among them), tried to erect formal structures to protect the republican form of government they established. Many realized the frailties of the project they undertook. Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the most prescient of the Founders, all but prophesied the rise of a Trump-like demagogue, warning in a letter to George Washington written during of the financial panic of 1792:
When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper… is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."
Hamilton’s warning isn’t just a curiosity for professional historians to ponder. It’s an announcement of a five-alarm fire in 2025.
The all-important question is how we fight back. The first step, plainly, is to realize the gravity of the moment. American exceptionalism—the idea that this country is immune from authoritarianism—is a myth.
The second step is to realize that Trumpism is not just another form of partisan politics. It cannot be countered by lethargic appeals by establishment Democrats to re-embrace the political center.
Winning the fight against Trumpism requires building a new progressive politics guided by energetic leaders like Zohran Mamdani, who can articulate a small “d” democratic vision for the future. And it will require a commitment from each of us to engage for the long haul, and never forget that together we have power, and that alone we have none.
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DOJ Targets Federal Judge for Warning Trump Could Spark 'Constitutional Crisis'
Judge James Boasberg reportedly raised concerns that the Trump administration "would disregard rulings of federal courts," something the White House has done repeatedly.
Jul 29, 2025
The Trump Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge for warning in early March that the president could spark a "constitutional crisis" by defying court orders—a concern that was swiftly validated.
The complaint against James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who alleged on social media that Boasberg made "improper public comments" about President Donald Trump and his administration.
During a March gathering of the Judicial Conference—the federal judiciary's policymaking body—Boasberg reportedly raised colleagues' fears that "the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis."
John Roberts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, "expressed hope that would not happen and in turn no constitutional crisis would materialize," according to a memo obtained by The Federalist, a right-wing publication.
Days after the Judicial Conference gathering, the Trump administration ignored Boasberg's order to turn around deportation flights, prompting an ACLU attorney to warn, "I think we're getting very close" to a constitutional crisis.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, later said there was probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court, concluding that the evidence demonstrated "a willful disregard" for the judge's order.
Boasberg's rulings against the Trump administration in the high-profile deportation case stemming from the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act have made the judge a target of the White House and its allies. Trump and some congressional Republicans have demanded that Boasberg be impeached.
Politico reported Monday that the Justice Department's complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff.
"Mizelle argued that Boasberg's views expressed at the conference violated the 'presumption of regularity' that courts typically afford to the executive branch," Politico noted. "And the Bondi aide said that the administration has followed all court orders, though several lower courts have found that the administration defied their commands."
A Washington Post analysis published last week estimated that Trump officials have been accused of violating court orders in "a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration."
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Return of Abrego Garcia a Major Blow to Trump
It would be very helpful to American democracy if the media would do its job and focus on the fact that the Garcia case represents a significant defeat for Trump and win for the rule of law.
Jun 10, 2025
In a surprise development, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man living in Maryland illegally deported to El Salvador was returned to the United States to face charges of transporting undocumented migrants. For months, the Trump Administration and the judicial system had been odds over returning Garcia to the United States. The Supreme Court had ruled that the Trump Administration had to “facilitate” Garcia’s return but not “effectuate” it.
It is essential to note that the Trump Administration admitted in court documents that they had inappropriately deported Garcia to El Salvador where he was imprisoned in a notorious maximum security prison. In an oval office meeting in April with Salvadoran President Bukele, Trump made it clear that Garcia would not ever be returning to the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Garcia “is never coming back to our country.”
The standoff between the Trump Administration and the courts led to talks of a constitutional crisis. Indeed, it was hard to see how the impasse would be resolved. Then, without any warning, Garcia was moved from El Salvador to face charges in Tennessee of smuggling undocumented immigrants. Instead of her blanket statement that Garcia would never return to American soil, Bondi now said that “Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. This is what American justice looks like.”
The charges against Garcia are hotly disputed by his attorneys. Democrats on Capitol Hill are also challenging the evidence against Garcia. On CNN, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal commented: “And I’ve heard again and again and again, as a prosecutor, as a United States attorney, federal prosecutor, as well as state attorney general, charges are not evidence. And so far, we’ve seen no evidence.”
Garcia’s return to the United States, even though he faces serious charges, is a real victory for the rule of law. As Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen put it in a statement: “As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights—and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
For reasons that escape me, the mainstream media has not pointed out that Garcia’s return to the United States is a huge victory for the rule of law and a defeat for President Trump. Garcia is now in a judicial system facing charges, which will be tested in a court of law. His case will not be adjudicated by the whims of the Trump administration.
Recent events suggest that the Trump team realizes the importance of Garcia’s return to America. Trump is a master of the political counterpunch which distracts the media and public’s attention from the matter at hand. I strongly doubt that Trump would have deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests had he not suffered a defeat in the Garcia case. It is, as the New York Times put it, the political fight that President Trump is looking for.
The hard task for Democrats is to respond to Trump’s provocations while keeping the focus on the rights to a fair trial, due process and peaceful protest. It would be very helpful to American democracy if the media would do its job and focus on the fact that the Garcia case represents a major defeat for Trump and a victory for the rule of law.
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The Right Is Risen: It's Time to Admit the US Constitution Has Failed
An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy. We can do better.
Jun 01, 2025
People increasingly ask if we are in a Constitutional crisis, but we are past that. We have undergone a regime change, and are operating outside the bounds of what we have understood to be the U.S. Constitution. The President has asserted unilateral control not only of all institutions of the national government, but over institutions of civil society, too.
The Varieties of Democracy Institute, based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, suggests that it might remove the U.S. from its list of nations designated as democracies. That seems right. In a democracy, after all, you do not fear speaking out against the government. But now, vulnerable individuals are not only afraid, some unknown number have been carted off to foreign labor camps as punishment for their political speech.
We knew some of what we’re facing was coming. Project 2025 was written by a broad coalition on the Far Right as a blueprint for the next Republican administration, as it has been since the Heritage Foundation published its first version for the incoming Reagan team. So far, according to one online tracker, of 313 discrete Project 2025 recommendations, 98 have been completed and another 66 are in progress.
But what’s happening is even more radical than what Project 2025 proposed, since what no one saw coming was Elon Musk, who has seized control of a broad range of executive agencies and their computers and payment systems. It’s a kind of techno-coup.
There are, in short, no formal institutions that consistently operate on behalf of the majority or that bind us together in common cause.
We also didn’t envision the Republican majority in Congress utterly abdicating its institutional role, or an inept Democratic Party acting mostly as if this was all business as usual. Then there’s the sheer number of elite institutions -- universities like Columbia, powerful law firms like Paul Weiss, or media organizations like ABC and CBS -- who have obeyed in advance.
As I write, there are 250 pending court cases challenging illegitimate Executive Orders (that many are nonetheless treating as law), illegal firings, funding cuts that violate Constitutional provisions and any number of statutes, extraordinary renditions (in which even legal residents and U.S. citizens have been seized by agents of the state and held without access to courts or lawyers), along with attacks on judges, opposition leaders, media, universities, law firms, nonprofits, unions, oversight and regulatory bodies, and student activists. Our courts were not built for this, and they are, even at their best, very slow (even if they are showing a bit more spine and a bit more speed than some of us anticipated).
We can be forgiven for being just a bit unnerved by the extravagant lawlessness of the second Trump Administration, even by its own historic standards. Its actions are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, and we should recognize that we are now living in one, even if it’s one still struggling to get its footing.
How did we get here?
We didn't exactly inhabit a paradise before Trump came on the scene. Along many dimensions of health and well-being, for many decades now people in the U.S. have fared worse than people in other rich democracies. We have had and continue to have the highest or near highest rates of poverty, child poverty, elderly poverty, income inequality, infant mortality, maternal mortality, gun violence, incarceration, substance use disorders, and death by preventable causes, while we have among the lowest rates of life expectancy, access to health care, intergenerational mobility, and, not coincidentally, of political participation.
Why have so many in the US fared so poorly compared to their peers in other countries, and why are we enduring this “democratic backsliding”?
Consider three possible explanations: Failures of the Constitution, failures of accountability, and failures of the media.
Let’s start by focusing on some specific (and long-standing) complaints about the Constitution itself.
Whatever the stubborn myths around it, the U.S. Constitution has been a disaster, corrupted from the start by its acceptance (and rewarding of) an exceptionally brutal form of chattel slavery. It’s always been a system intentionally designed to frustrate the ability of even a determined majority to exert its will. You don’t have to take my word for it. Read James Madison’s Federalist #10. Consider almost any issue that leads to our poor outcomes—access to health care, gun violence, income and wealth inequality—and large majorities in the U.S. have regularly supported reforms, often radical ones, that would improve well-being. It’s not the players that are the problem, it’s the game.
The separation of powers creates obstacles to effective governance, and our system has more veto points—places to stop action from being taken -- than any other comparable nation. In periods of divided government, when one of our polarized parties does not control all three branches, legislative action is almost impossible (although we have to account for the fact that even with the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, today’s Republican party in Trump’s first 100 days passed fewer Bills than any Congress in modern history). The public is rightly exasperated by what it sees as inaction and unresponsiveness.
Federalism exacerbates this dysfunction, making it even harder to enact and implement policies and difficult for people to know who to credit or blame. That’s more grounds for dissatisfaction and cynicism.
Our Senate is famously undemocratic. Take just the fact that California, with a population of some 39.4 million, has the same representation and votes—two Senators—as the 588 thousand people of Wyoming. Or that the filibuster allows a minority to prevent the majority from acting—40 percent (representing even fewer people than that) can obstruct everything. Minorities rule, not majorities. And because of simple geography, those governing minorities are disproportionately white and rural.
The electoral college reinscribes the imbalances of the Senate onto the Presidential election process, and creates a system, unlike any other, where the person who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win. That, of course, is how we got Trump the first time around, with this weird system that values land over people.
We have federal courts with much too much arbitrary power, regularly working against the majority will while made unaccountable by life tenure. They have privileged business interests over the public interest, granted money the same rights as votes, and more recently tried to strip away hard-fought victories for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, principles of one-person-one vote and racial nondiscrimination, and the ability of federal agencies to ensure our access to clean air and water, or safe food and workplaces.
As if all that isn’t bad enough, we have what is literally the hardest constitution on the planet to amend. Because of that, we’ve only been able to change it a total of 17 times since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791, and two of those times were the enactment and then repeal of Prohibition.
These anti-majoritarian features combine with elite lawlessness, undermining our faith that government cares about us or can function on our behalf, which helps create the space for authoritarians to emerge. This is the accountability explanation.
The first moment in the modern period that put us on this path (setting aside Gerald Ford’s ill-conceived pardon of Richard Nixon) was the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court unnecessarily intervened in order to ensure that Republican George W. Bush ascended to the presidency over Democrat Al Gore—and Gore, instead of fighting, surrendered to a judicial coup.
This becomes a pattern—the ruthlessness of Republicans and the fecklessness of Democrats.
Then there’s the failure to prosecute the war criminals in the George W. Bush administration, who, aided and abetted by members of both parties and a complicit media, lied the nation into disastrous post-9/11 conflicts that killed close to one million people, and who tortured men it detained without trial in secret “black site” prisons throughout the world.
Or take the Obama administration’s unwillingness to prosecute the bankers who would have crashed the global economy in 2008 were it not for government intervention; as it was, they created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression itself, one marked by an exceptionally slow recovery. But not content with his failure to hold accountable the institutions and individuals that were responsible, Obama rewarded them with leadership roles in his administration. That perversity helped bring about the rise of the Tea Party, upon which the MAGA movement was built.
Add in the widespread inability of almost all institutions to hold Trump himself to account for fomenting insurrection and attempting to subvert elections.
Our poorly designed system (which assumed it could prevent the formation of political parties and therefore didn't account for them in its design) is now being exploited by a revanchist Republican party demonstrating itself to have allegiance only to its members own personal ambitions and their opposition to multi-racial democracy. One way to make sense of the past 60 or so years is that after we started, however gingerly, finally affording meaningful rights to poor people, to women, to people of color, to gays and lesbians—rich, straight, white men lost their damn minds, and have been fighting to reverse those modest gains ever since.
This moment has also come to pass thanks to Fox News and its compatriots, a propaganda system that aids and abets these anti-democratic forces, along with a legacy media filled with too many people too hungry for clicks, access, and advancement and too few committed to ensuring that their work helps people make knowledgeable judgments about the political events of the day. We have underestimated the role that our fractured and polluted information environment has played in our decline into authoritarianism (and for what it’s worth, Jeanine Pirro’s appointment in May of 2025 marked the 23rd Fox News employee to join the Trump regime).
There are, in short, no formal institutions that consistently operate on behalf of the majority or that bind us together in common cause.
Thinking about this longer history helps us see that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease, rather than a cause. He’s the culmination of decades-long trends, and to assume that once he leaves the scene things will necessarily get better is to misunderstand the nature of the problem.
Thinking about this longer history helps us see that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease, rather than a cause.
There is another argument to be made for why, for most of our history, we have not functioned as a democracy, and it’s my final point about failures of accountability. Prior to the end of the Civil War, Black Americans, especially those in the South, lived under an explicitly authoritarian regime which maintained its power through violence, threats of violence, and the formal disenfranchisement of disfavored populations. With the exception of the brief period of Radical Reconstruction from 1865-1877, in which the Northern army enforced the outcome of the Civil War at the point of a gun, the United States still functioned as a brutal apartheid regime at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I was born in 1965. Anything we might even charitably characterize as "U.S. democracy" is only as old as I am.
Now the whole country is getting a taste of what it was like for many of our fellow Americans throughout most of our history. But here we are. Perhaps the South won the Civil War after all.
What should we build toward, and how?
In normal times, we could see what progressive policy reform might look like with items that are already on the agenda to one degree or another: Expand the Child Tax Credit; forgive certain categories of student loan debt; enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act; join the National Electoral Vote Compact; add a Public Option to the Affordable Care Act and work toward Medicare (or Medicaid) for All; pass the Women’s Health Protection Act; fully fund and expand Social Security; raises taxes on corporations and the rich; increase the minimum wage; forbid members of Congress from trading stocks; and fund robust public and local media.
But making a list does not address the political obstacles to such policy reforms or how one might overcome them. We need a new politics if we want to have any realistic hope of making new policy.
Besides, even if we could enact laws enshrining any of these goals as policy, so what? The MAGA regime has routinely ignored existing laws and norms and has, for all intents and purposes, destroyed the previous order. There is no policy system for us to work within. So we might as well seize the opportunity and build the nation we want, not the one the Constitution bequeathed us.
We have already established our right to do this. As Thomas Jefferson -- a slaver himself, we should note -- wrote in our first founding document:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [we would say “people” today] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
If we accept that the Constitutional order has already been overthrown and that we inhabit a kind of lawless state ruled by brute power and the ghostly remnants of a withered system, and that there is a right to revolution, as Jefferson articulated it, then we can use this moment to imagine the world anew, unconstrained, if we wish, by the old rules.
We need a new politics if we want to have any realistic hope of making new policy.
There is precedent in our own history for this—the Constitution itself was created by ignoring the legal process for change set forth in its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, because they were rightly deemed unsuitable to the needs of the new nation.
More to the point, why should we be bound by a document written 238 years ago by 55 white, propertied, disproportionately slaveholding, men (and signed by only 39 of them)? What right should those dead founders have to dictate to us how we organize power or govern ourselves? Why must we be bound by their understanding of who should have full rights, or what those rights should be?
Thomas Paine, among the more fulsomely democratic of that generation of leaders, wrote on this principle:
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
We are being governed from beyond the grave.
So, what lessons have we learned that should inform the construction of a new government, one that is actually of, by, and for the people? What's our ambitious, bold, 50-year plan? What’s the progressive, democratic, humanistic version of Project 2025?
What right should those dead founders have to dictate to us how we organize power or govern ourselves? Why must we be bound by their understanding of who should have full rights, or what those rights should be?
The first step must be to drive MAGA out of politics just as Germany drove the Nazis out after World War II, just as we should have tried the Confederates for treason and driven them permanently out of politics after our Civil War. Instead, President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, after only two years in prison, was pardoned and later died peacefully in bed at age 81. That is: We must contemplate the destruction of the Republican Party as it is currently constituted—we need to learn from our failure to cast out the traitors after the Civil War (and our failure to hold Trump accountable for his first insurrection).
The larger project is, as I have tried to do here, to demystify and ultimately delegitimize the U.S. Constitution. An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy. It’s time for it to go, and next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence provides an excellent opportunity to reevaluate our history given the dire present it has led us to.
As part of that effort, we should reject the notion that courts are the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution or of the law. A constitution is an expression of our collective will, and we too have a right to say what it means. Federal courts should have limited jurisdiction, and members should have term limits. There are lots of good proposals for reform, but it is absurd to be governed by nine unelected wizards in black robes.
An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy.
As we abandon the outdated structures of the Constitution, we must end our anomalous two-party regime. In no other system would Congresswoman Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders be in the same political party as Chuck Shumer and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. One way is to build something like a Parliamentary system, with multi-member districts and proportional representation, enabling there to be more parties for voters to choose from. Political scientist Lee Drutman has been thinking this through for years now. As part of that, we should expand the size of the House, perhaps by as much as twice or more its current size.
At the same time, abolish the Senate entirely—it’s irredeemable.
States have too much power in interpreting and implementing national legislation, and there is too much variation in your life chances or your access to, say, reproductive health care or your ability to vote, depending on nothing more than where you were born or where you happen to live. Mississippi, with a poverty rate three times that of New Hampshire, is in many respects an entirely separate country. There are surely other models for regional power sharing—Canadian Provinces? Swiss Cantons?—that would better equalize opportunity across the nation.
Short of that, if we are going to keep an upper chamber that serves as yet one more obstacle to a functioning government and retain something like states, then Washington, D.C. should have the same rights as other political entities, and all other occupied U.S. territories (Puerto Rico first among them) must have equal rights or be free from being under our colonial thumb. California is ungovernable in its current size and could be as many as three states; maybe New York City should be a state of its own; and why on earth do we need two Dakotas?
If we do adopt something like a parliamentary system, in which the majority party or majority coalition of the legislature then forms a government that administers the Executive Branch, we can abolish the electoral college and allow the party leader to become prime minister or president. No longer would divided government or vetoes be possible. That’s an obvious way to create some accountability to voters: Once elected, a party should actually be able to govern.
As with other systems, there should be a mechanism for No Confidence votes to quickly remove from power a failed or corrupt governing coalition, and we need to normalize that kind of turnover. One of the reasons that Trump retained office after two impeachment proceedings is that the threshold for conviction and removal is too high (and dependent upon that malapportioned Senate), and we have come to think of impeachment as an extraordinary, radical proposition rather than merely another routine means of addressing incompetence or malfeasance, which is how it was intended to function.
Since any new system that is genuinely democratic must be constructed from the ground up, it is useful, I think, for each of us to begin to open our imaginations to the world we want to see...
Elections should be funded with public money and equitable public media access. Perhaps we should consider mandatory voting, as in Australia, and look for new spaces for public input and involvement—democracy is a practice as much as anything, and we need to find ways to stitch together the deliberative decision-making that brings together communities in common cause and makes a habit of civic engagement. What’s the larger-scale equivalent of Vermont Town Meeting Day, for example?
We should simultaneously be dismantling our repressive systems of surveillance, policing, and prisons, including what Dorothy Roberts calls the family policing system, almost all of which have their roots in schemes to subjugate enslaved people, and replace them with local institutions that foster community and create conditions for actual safety and security. It is worth noting in this regard that the immigration abuses of the current administration would not be possible were it not for the racialized surveillance, policing, and hyper-incarceration apparatuses built over decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
Finally, we might formally commit to a new Bill of Universal Human Rights: to food, housing, healthcare, education, and economic security, with a guaranteed minimum income or Universal Basic Income.
******
My list of potential reforms is meant merely to jump start our thinking and begin to move the Overton Window of acceptable discussion; I am under no delusion that such radical, revolutionary change is imminent (or that now would necessarily be a wise time to create new governing structures, given who holds power).
But since any new system that is genuinely democratic must be constructed from the ground up, it is useful, I think, for each of us to begin to open our imaginations to the world we want to see and to think about how to build the connections, the consensus, and the institutions that can help to get us there. If we acknowledge that, thanks to Trump, the old order is truly gone, then we have a tabula rasa, a clean slate. What should we inscribe upon it?
We have urgent work to do in the short term before we can get to this project of what we might think of as a Third Reconstruction, of course. But maybe, ironically enough, this perilous time is the moment to start thinking seriously about how we might make a better world.
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Memo to Washington Insiders: Stop Pretending That Trump Is Normal!
Refusals to comply with Supreme Court decisions equal a constitutional crisis.
Apr 16, 2025
I was at an event last week where a prominent GOP pollster who often appears on CNN was discussing the details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s political profile as we approach the 100-day mark of his administration. The back and forth was interesting to me and my fellow political nerds. However, during the presentation, my inner voice sounded like Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: “This is not normal.”
Unfortunately, far too many political insiders are acting as if Trump is a normal if a little eccentric president. They think that they can negotiate with him on issues and influence his staff to move him in their direction. No matter what Trump does, they see it as just a negotiating tactic.
April 14, 2025 should go down in American history as the day when Trump’s steps in the direction of authoritarianism made it clear to all that this is not a normal presidency. After Monday’s events, there can be no more debate about what Trump is and where he is taking America.
Let’s break down what happened. In a meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, President Trump openly defied a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that said that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador, must be returned to the United States. As The New York Times put it:
The meeting in the Oval Office on Monday was a blunt example of Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts. The president and his top White House officials said the decision over Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would have to be made by [El Salvador President] Mr. Bukele.
If this was not enough, President Trump went on to outline plans for sending American citizens convicted of crimes to El Salvador. More from The New York Times:
President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February.
“I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”
Another sign that we are in a constitutional crisis happened just outside the Oval Office on Monday. President Trump had barred The Associated Press from covering certain White House events because they had refused to use his preferred nomenclature for what the White House refers to as the “Gulf of America.” Last week, a federal judge ordered the White House to restore AP access to White House events. The federal judge who ruled in this case was Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee. In his decision, McFadden wrote that:
No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints... The Constitution requires no less.
On Monday, the White House blocked the AP reporter from attending the Oval Office press conference with President Trump and Bukele. Again, Trump failed to obey a court order.
Now, barring a reporter from the Oval Office may not seem to be a big deal. However, it is the government telling the media what it can report on. Plus, the courts ruled directly in the AP’s favor. The lines are clearly drawn here.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Monday openly defied decisions of the judicial branch. One was a 9-0 ruling of the Supreme Court and the other ruling was by a federal judge he appointed. As a nation, we are clearly in a constitutional crisis. This is not something theoretical or something that might happen sometime in the future. The crisis is at hand. The fabric of the American republic is being torn in two.
What we need is bold opposition from Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. If the current leadership is unwillingly to respond, they need to step aside. The first action that each of us can take to protect the American experiment is to stop pretending that Trump is a normal president.
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What Would the Founders Make of Trump’s Authoritarianism?
The Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive.
Mar 26, 2025
The U.S. Constitution is very specific about the powers of Congress and very vague about the powers of the president and the judiciary. While the authors of the nation’s founding documents were explicit that power had to be divided between three coequal branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial, they did not anticipate the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump, the cowardice of congressional representatives beholden to a populist demagogue for endorsements and campaign funds, nor the reactionary ideology of a right-wing Supreme Court. It is not fair to blame the founders for events 250 into the future, with the United States in the midst of a major constitutional crisis.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin placed the responsibility for upholding the Constitution on future generations when he warned that the new government is “A republic, if you can keep it.” Abraham Lincoln recognized the difficulty of maintaining a country based on this one’s founding principles in his Gettysburg Address over 150 years ago when he told the assembled, “We are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
The Constitution assigns the president an undefined executive power with some very specific tasks. The president represents the country in talks with other countries and can negotiate treaties, but the treaties must be approved by the Senate; the president can veto or sign bills approved by both houses of Congress, and then they are responsible for enforcing the laws; and the president acts as Commander-in-Chief of the military during a war, nominates judges and ambassadors pending Senate approval, and grants pardons.
The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
There is no mention in the Constitution of political parties or of Cabinet members. Departments and Cabinet positions were created by Congress later to make the government run more smoothly. Executive orders are not mentioned in the Constitution either, and they do not carry the power of law, but every president since George Washington has issued executive orders as instructions to heads of the different federal departments about how to carry out their duties. The Constitution does not give the president the authority to issue executive orders that overturn or ignore laws passed by Congress or decisions made by the Supreme Court.
Since George Washington’s presidency, different presidents have interpreted their powers and responsibilities as chief executive in different ways. President Trump embraces the modern unitary executive theory, which claims that the president has sole authority over the executive branch of the government. According to this theory presidential power can only be restrained if a president is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate, something that it so difficult that it has never happened in United States history.
Without restraints, Trump argues he can summarily fire without cause any employee of the executive branch including Cabinet members approved by the Senate, he can decide not to spend money allocated by Congress, and he can ignore laws he does not agree with even though they were passed by Congress and signed by a previous president. The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court seems inclined to support Trump’s view of executive power. In 2020, during Trump’s first presidency, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled 5-4 that “the entire ‘executive power’ belongs to the president alone,” although it never actually explained what executive power means.
Three of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, addressed the allocation of power in the new government and explained why power had to be divided. Thomas Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, but he did address the separation of powers in his 1784 Notes on the State of Virginia, with ideas that helped shape the Constitution. While Jefferson was more concerned with the legislative branch assuming too much power, he was very clear that “all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body,” but “concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government... An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Jefferson warned, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
James Madison, who was the secretary at the Constitutional Convention, explained how separation of powers should work in essays he wrote during the debate in New York State over ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Papers 47-50, he explained the importance of separating powers and how the principle was applied in the Constitution. He also addressed concerns about how the system would work. An underlying principle of the new government was that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” balancing power among the branches of government to protect individual rights and prevent tyranny. Madison famously wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Alexander Hamilton, an active participant in the Constitutional Convention, wrote in favor of a strong executive and is used to justify the unitary executive theory; however, Hamilton was not discussing unlimited executive authority but was disputing the idea of a presidential council. Hamilton explained the specific powers assigned to the president and did not anticipate claims that a president would be virtually unchallengeable. According to Hamilton, “The only remaining powers of the executive are comprehended in giving information to Congress of the State of the Union; in recommending to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient”; and “faithfully executing the laws.” He was very careful to distinguish between the president as an elected executive subject to impeachment and the power of a hereditary monarch.
I think the Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive. Their bigger fear was that congressional majorities would attempt to usurp the executive’s responsibility to administer laws in order to benefit special interest groups. For the same reason they wanted an independent judiciary to prevent the politically motivated administration of justice. The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
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Trump Plays Very Dangerous Game by Saying 'F You' to Judicial Orders
If this deportation case goes to the Supreme Court and the president ignores its ruling, every American should take to the street to secure his ouster.
Mar 18, 2025
After a federal judge pressed the Trump administration to provide evidence by 5 pm Monday about whether the White House had violated the court’s order in deporting migrants with little to no due process, so-called border czar Tom Homan said that the flights would continue regardless. “We’re not stopping,” he said. “I don’t care what the judges think.”
In our system, judges don’t just “think.” They have the final say, unless their rulings are appealed to the Supreme Court, in which case the high court’s majority has the final final say.
On Monday afternoon, it became apparent that Trump’s Justice Department shares Homan’s odd view of our judicial system. DOJ lawyers filed papers telling the judge that the administration would not provide any further information about the deportation flights, and that the court should vacate the hearing.
Later, speaking Monday evening on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge, saying “What he’s done is an intrusion on the president’s authority.”
What’s going on here?
A very dangerous game.
On Sunday night, Trump told reporters that a federal judge in California who ordered the administration to rehire thousands of fired probationary workers was “putting himself in the position of the president of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes.”
Excuse me? In our system of government, courts pass judgment on actions of a president and the executive branch. Courts don’t put themselves in the “position” of a president. They act as the Constitution empowers them to act — as a co-equal branch of government.
If the executive branch doesn’t agree with what a lower-court judge decides, it can appeal to a higher court and ultimately to the Supreme Court.
Trump isn’t the only one to make this unconstitutional claim. In early February, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” It was an odd statement coming from someone who has studied at one of America’s preeminent law schools — and it was logically absurd, since it’s up to judges (and eventually the Supreme Court’s justices) to determine a president’s “legitimate power.”
Let’s be clear. Trump has openly violated numerous laws and constitutional provisions — such as ending birthright citizenship; giving associates of Elon Musk’s government-slashing effort access to a sensitive Treasury Department system; transferring transgender female inmates to male prisons; placing thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development employees on leave; and effectively dismantling USAID and folding it into the State Department.
In response, federal judges have temporarily barred a slew of Trump orders from taking effect.
But not until now has Trump or his regime blatantly refused to follow a judge’s order.
What happens when this or another lower-court ruling goes to the Supreme Court, and the high court rules against Trump?
Vance has said that if this occurs, Trump should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
Never mind that the quote attributed to Jackson is, as one scholar has noted, “probably apocryphal.” It’s heard more and more from Trump appointees these days, as exemplified by Homan’s remark this morning and this afternoon’s Justice Department filing.
Trump’s appointments in his second term are having the opposite effect of his first-term appointees. In his first term, they restrained him somewhat. Recall that the Justice Department’s top brass threatened to resign en masse if he appointed as attorney general the one assistant attorney general who was prepared to sell his soul to Trump and say the 2020 election was stolen from him.
This time, his appointees are magnifying his worst instincts. Rather than act as guardrails, they are egging Trump on.
Many people wonder if we’re in a “constitutional crisis.” Definitions of that phrase vary considerably, as do opinions about whether we’re in one now.
My worry is that Trump is surrounded by extremist anti-democracy nihilists, including his vice president, who are encouraging him to defy the Supreme Court.
If and when he does, we’ll be in a constitutional crisis that should cause every American to take to the streets.
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Our 2 Choices: Join the Democratic Party to Transform It, or Acquiesce to Fascism
Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.
Feb 21, 2025
We are in the midst the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. In less than one month, the new administration has shredded the United States’ heretofore sacrosanct system of checks and balances—through the brazen expansion of executive power, the de facto disregard of Congress whenever expedient, the intimidation of adversaries including the press, and a brash confidence that President Donald Trump cannot be contained by the courts.
Fortunately, there is one weapon available to us, one that is large enough to combat a crisis of this scale, one that we as citizens can wield to contain, defeat, and roll back this fascist counterrevolution–the Democratic Party.
Not the Democratic Party as it is—so far, the response to the crisis by Democratic leadership in Congress has been anemic, an utter failure.
After four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.
Rather, the Democratic Party as it must be, and will be, when we do the only thing available to us to save our democracy, freedom, and constitutional republic: Enter en masse into the Democratic Party and transform it into an institution of, by, and for the people.
For better or for worse, we live in a two-party political system.
Since 1946 there have been over 17,000 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. How many have been won by a third-party candidate? Zero.
In the U.S. Senate, there have been two third party candidates elected: William F Buckley’s brother, James L Buckley, in 1970 on the New York Conservative line (usually a fusion Party); and Joe Lieberman, founding member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.
Final score over the past 78 years: Connecticut for Lieberman 1 Green Party 0.
The record is just as bad statewide and in localities. There have literally been millions of elections since WWII. The number of third-party victories is infinitesimal, less than one-tenth of 1%.
Third Partyism in the United States is, at best, an utter waste of time and energy; at worst (and this is usually the case), left-wing third parties facilitate the rise of the right—both by siphoning votes away from Democrats, and, more significantly, by drawing well-intentioned progressives away from participating in politics that actually make a difference.
This is unequivocally true for a very simple reason: The rules and regulations that govern our society are still, to this day, determined by our elected officials, who are either Democrats or Republicans.
Indeed. Until Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions do considerably more damage to our democratic republic by changing the rules of our elections, this will remain the case. There are scheduled midterm elections in 2026—and it remains likely that they will be as competitive as recent U.S. elections. (The Trump administration is intent on whittling away voter protections, but anything like the wholesale transformation of competitive voting as in Hungary or Russia appears a bridge too far in just two years.)
As such, the Democratic Party remains our only hope to preserve our freedom and our civil, human, and political rights. The Republican Party is wholly captured by the authoritarian, anti-constitutional MAGA movement.
And, to reiterate, there are only two parties that matter in the American political system, in which elected officials establish the laws that govern our society.
So, either you enter the Democratic Party to reform it, or you are complicit in the rise of fascism.
If that sounds too straightforward or confrontational, I ask you to take a breath and seriously consider what’s transpiring in the country. I don’t mean to be condescending, and I certainly don’t intend to scold anyone (if anyone deserves that, it’s myself for not writing this sooner). But I’ve done my due diligence in writing this essay. I’ve challenged dozens upon dozens of people to negate the logic of my argument. No one who has tried has even come close—and 90% have conceded the point without even making a counterargument.
At this hour, the Democratic Party is the only instrument at our disposal that can deliver the results we need.
The time has come for us to take off our blinders, understand the lay of the land so we can engage our foes, defeat them, and then proceed to build a stronger democratic society.
This strategy has worked before, in the 1930s and 40s, to claw our society back from the brink of fascism. FDR’s transformed Democratic Party, defined by the mass entry of workers in coordination with the labor movement, then proceeded to build the most prosperous middle class in human history, and by the mid-1960s codified the demands of the civil rights movement.
This is the third essay in a four-part series outlining why progressive “mass entryism” into the Democratic Party is necessary at this hour of history in order to salvage American democracy, freedom, and our Constitutional Republic.
The first two installments addressed the main causes behind the rise of Donald Trump: widespread dissatisfaction with the economy and the political establishment. The first article made the case that only a progressive-Bernie Sanders-FDR-inspired set of policies can deliver the shared economic prosperity that Americans crave and thus vanquish Trump’s hollow populism. The second shows that, once again, only progressives will fulfill the wishes of the people by establishing a true “small d” democratic revival that ends the reign of plutocratic money and insures equal political agency for every citizen.
In this essay, the most polemical in the series, I make the case that all progressives, with no exceptions, must get over any qualms they have about entering the Democratic Party. They either do this or accept that they are failing to stand up for what they claim to believe. History will not treat them kindly if they fail to act accordingly.
The fourth and final installment will outline a two-step fail-proof strategy for transforming the Democratic Party in a progressive direction. Together we can build the party into a force that can save American democracy and deliver the fully inclusive, prosperous middle-class society that the vast majority of Americans want.
In the title of this article, the words “to transform” are just as important as those about joining the Democratic Party. Heretofore, and since Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has supported neoliberal policies. This must end, and end now, for the simple reason that neoliberalism begat Trumpism—and will always continue to do so.
Here’s why. If a society is organized, as it is under neoliberalism, so that all the surplus wealth flows into the coffers of an ever increasingly rich small minority (aka the idle investor class)—it simply follows that this group of people will use their unrivaled wealth and power to end any capacity the general population may have to influence how society allocates its resources. Four and a half-decades after former President Ronald Reagan and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched the neoliberal revolution, and 30-odd years since Clinton and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair joined their team—this is exactly what Trump, Musk, and Project 2025 are doing.
It follows that mass entryism into the Democratic Party is not enough; we also must reform it along the lines that were outlined in the first two articles in this series. To sit idly by, allowing the Democratic Party to remain in its current state, is as good as handing Trump the keys to the kingdom.
While mass entryism may be necessary, it won’t be easy. At this hour of history, people’s resistance to becoming actively involved in Democratic Party politics is profound. On the one hand, party leadership has (with rare exceptions) obstructed efforts by progressives to gain a toehold, wearing down its grassroots wing. More significant for the general population has been the slow realization and then tacit acceptance of a central tenet of the neoliberal order—that money and capital have an iron grip on all meaningful political decision-making.
However, neoliberal ideologues, in their heyday, did not actively seek to dismantle the apparatus of elections. Rather, promotion of “democracy” was central to their world view—even as they declared themselves the winners in advance (witness Thatcher’s “There is no Alternative” and Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”). The actual destruction of liberal democracy has been left to neoliberalism’s heirs—Trump and the emergent international alliance of authoritarians (the “reactionary international,” aka 21st century fascism).
Nonetheless, after four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.
As mentioned before, no one I spoke to could negate the structural reality that the Democratic Party is literally the only institutionally empowered channel in American society capable of beating back Trumpism. However, the very same people acknowledged that they hadn’t even considered mass entryism into the Democratic Party as the appropriate and viable solution to the current crisis.
When asked why, a common response was for people to look at me with a blank stare, then blink their eyes or look away as if seeing the sun for the first time after being in a cave for days. However, this was not a “seen-the-light moment,” only a momentary break in the hypnosis. Invariably, what I would hear next became a familiar litany of reasons why Democratic mass entryism just won’t happen.
Most prominent among these were:
- The Democratic establishment will never cede power.
- Too many people are making too much money through the Democratic Party, and they will block any attempt to shut down their gravy train.
- Capital will never allow one of the two parties to be taken over by the people.
- Progressives will resist being shepherded into a centrist party.
- The Democrats are a war party. Gaza.
- The Democratic “brand,” and the progressive brand, have been made toxic by effective right-wing propaganda.
- Resistance activism is adequate (The Resistance is a great thing. Necessary, but not sufficient; it requires a parallel positive program.)
- Social movement activism is the solution (Also, a great thing, but requires allies on the inside. Must be supplemented by Democratic Party entryism.)
- Labor Movement activism is the solution (Another great thing. Solidarity forever, and across all sectors of society through Democratic Party entryism)
- Working people simply don’t have the time for political activism.
- Americans have been conditioned to remain politically inert.
In the fourth and final article in this series, I will outline an effective strategy for transforming the Democratic Party through mass entryism. In the context of that strategy, I will address the objections listed above.
In the meantime, please internalize the message of this essay—nothing is more important:
Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.
The Democratic Party is failing now. We cannot allow this to continue. Everyone reading this understands there must be change, and that requires action.
Either we get involved in transforming the Democratic Party into the means that will defeat Trump and 21st-century fascism, or we are complicit in its rise.
Join PDA’s efforts to create a truly progressive Democratic Party, which we desperately need at this crucial hour of our history.
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Quoting Napoleon, Trump Openly Declares He's Above the Law
"The single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president."
Feb 16, 2025
Fears that the United States is in the midst of a constitutional crisis—or something significantly worse—intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that "he who saves his country does not violate any law," a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Trump's post on X—the platform owned by billionaire shadow government leader Elon Musk—came as his administration continued its sweeping and destructive assault on the federal government and workforce, running roughshod over the law in the process.
Trump's post Saturday was the latest brazen signal that the president doesn't recognize limits on his authority to impose his far-right agenda.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie called Trump's message "the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president."
Since taking office less than a month ago, Trump and Musk have moved aggressively to dismantle federal agencies and remove any officials who could shine light on or obstruct their efforts.
Trump, his handpicked Cabinet officials, and Musk have also disregarded or openly attacked the other two co-equal branches of government, accusing judges who have moved to halt or limit the new administration's actions of being Democratic partisans.
In some cases, the Trump administration has actively defied rulings from federal courts, an alarming indication of what's to come.
Yasmin Abusaif and Douglas Keith of the Brennan Center for Justice noted Friday that "the last time the United States saw widespread open defiance of court orders by elected officials was when governors in Southern states refused to integrate their schools after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public education in Brown v. Board of Education."
"President Dwight Eisenhower—though he was no fan of the court's decision—ultimately dispatched troops to the South to help enforce the ruling, saying, 'The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional process in this country, and I will obey,'" Abusaif and Keith continued. "The governors' efforts to defy court orders are widely acknowledged as one of the most shameful periods in U.S. history."
Frank Bowman, a law professor and former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for Slate last week that "with each passing day, the practical ability of the courts to stop, or even materially hinder, the catastrophe diminishes."
"If Trump successfully defies the courts," Bowman added, "the only remaining obstacle to dictatorship will be public revulsion, national popular protest, and the hope that such a reaction would cause Trump to retreat and, at long last, recall some fraction of the Republican Party to its constitutional duty."
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