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The Spinelessness of Thune and Johnson Is Destroying American Democracy
GOP leaders in Congress are assaulting the Constitution by dismantling the separation of powers in favor of limitless presidential authority indistinguishable from monarchy or a dictatorship of Der Fuhrer.
Oct 31, 2025
Dear Majority Leader Thune and House Speaker Johnson:
Under your leaderships, the wholesale surrender of constitutional powers of Congress to the White House has been appalling. You both took oaths to defend and preserve the Constitution under Article VI. In violation of your oaths, you are destroying the Constitution by dismantling the separation of powers—a structural bill of rights to arrest executive tyranny—in favor of limitless presidential authority indistinguishable from monarchy or Der Fuhrer.
You cannot claim ignorance. Among other assertions and actions, President Donald Trump proclaimed on July 23, 2019, “Then I have Article 2, where I have the right to do anything I want as president.” If there were any doubt about Mr. Trump’s belief in lawless presidential omnipotence, it should have been dispelled by Mr. Trump’s skepticism about honoring his oath of office on May 4, 2025. During an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Trump was questioned about a potential mass deportation program. When Welker asked, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Trump responded, “I don’t know.”
Would you have acted as Mr. Trump has as president of the United States? Can you accept behavior that you would not tolerate if you occupied the White House?
On your watch, Congress has surrendered the war powers to Mr. Trump. It has surrendered the power of the purse to Mr. Trump. It has surrendered the treaty power to Mr. Trump. It has surrendered the oversight and confirmation powers to Mr. Trump. It has surrendered the power to legislate to Mr. Trump, including limitless discretion to jettison his constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed instead of being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Mr. Trump’s refusals to enforce the congressional ban on TikTok, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the federal prohibition on extortion, the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Hatch Act, or the Leahy Amendments are some examples of his serial violations of law. Indeed, Mr. Trump has turned the United States into a police state in which any criticism of his stewardship of our liberties is treated and prosecuted as a felony.
You both have idled as Mr. Trump has flouted the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution, putting the White House up for auction and lately, unlawfully paying for a giant ballroom with private contributions. You both have acquiesced while Mr. Trump has daily flouted the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and association, pressing to make American journalists echo chambers of his administration in the manner of Russian President Vladimir Putin and RT and Radio Sputnik.
Would you have acted as Mr. Trump has as president of the United States? Can you accept behavior that you would not tolerate if you occupied the White House?
You have turned Congress into a laughingstock as the Invertebrate Branch. We have no confidence that you will respond to our constitutional peril by impeaching and removing President Trump from office. Your entire careers betray the treacherous earmarks of the “summer soldier and sunshine patriot” as historians will highlight.
On July 4, 1776, nearly 250 years ago, the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence signed their death warrants to secure unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under attack by King George III and his powerful military forces. President Trump has bested the King’s tyranny. He is exercising the power to assassinate any person or organization on the planet as a putative enemy of the United States. Trump’s assassinations may have started with suspected drug traffickers. His dress rehearsal was assisting Israeli assassinations throughout the Middle East. Mr. Trump has articulated no limiting principle that would preclude assassinating political opponents, active or retired, including Members of Congress. “Immunity, immunity, immunity,” in the words of Justice Sonya Sotomayor dissenting in Trump v. United States (July 1, 2024). The only uncertainty is where Members stand in the queue, unlessimpeachment is forthcoming by Congress without tarry.
The lament of Pastor Martin Niemöller, inaudible during the rise of Hitler, should awaken you from your cowardly complacencies:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein
Ralph Nader
Lou Fisher
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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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Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said Trump and his allies "plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it.”
Oct 24, 2025
In a frightening interview, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies said there is a “plan” for the president to remain in power after 2028, despite constitutional limits.
Speaking to a pair of interviewers at The Economist, Steve Bannon—Trump’s former chief strategist and one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement—described a third Trump term as a divinely ordained fait accompli that people must simply accept.
“Well, he’s gonna get a third term, so Trump ’28,” Bannon said. “Trump is gonna be president in 2028, and people ought to just get accommodated with that.”
Asked about the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which plainly forbids a president from serving more than two terms in office, Bannon proclaimed that “there are many different alternatives” to get around it.
“At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he said. “But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be president in ’28.”
Bannon continued: “We have to finish what we started... I know this will drive you guys crazy, but [Trump] is a vehicle of divine providence. He’s an instrument. He’s very imperfect. He’s not churchy. But he is an instrument of divine will.”
“We need him for at least one more term,” Bannon reiterated, “and he’ll get that in ’28.”
In recent days, Trump has increasingly signaled his intent to run for a third term, selling “Trump 2028” merchandise on his website and displaying it in the Oval Office during negotiations with Democrats over the government shutdown.
His recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a luxury ballroom has also raised alarms that Trump increasingly views himself as its permanent resident rather than a temporary steward.
Bannon was adamant that Trump would not only serve a third term, but that his staying in office would be “by the will of the American people.”
This assumption is out of line with what polls would seem to predict: Trump’s support recently hit a new low in his second term, with just 37% of voters approving of his job performance in the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, compared to 61% who disapprove.
Bannon’s comments came days after the New York Times reported that Trump’s handpicked election officials have called for him to declare a “national emergency” ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which they say would allow him to assert more control over election laws and impose new rules on state and local elections without approval from Congress.
Max Flugrath of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, who warned earlier this week of Trump’s plans to “hijack” the next elections, said that by pushing for a third term for the president, “Bannon is basically saying, ‘Let’s light the Constitution on fire.’”
Author and activist Jim Stewartson noted that Bannon “uses the same alchemy as [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to rationalize destroying the Constitution: ‘spiritual war.’”
Johnson has argued that the US government “must be biblically sanctioned” and that the Founders’ idea of the separation of church and state was “a misnomer.” Hegseth, meanwhile, has endorsed a video of a far-right pastor discussing the need to repeal the 19th Amendment, which enshrined the right of women to vote.
Some pointed out that Bannon often manages to create a stir in the media by saying provocative things and claiming to have privileged knowledge about the machinations of Trump’s inner circle. It’s not the first time Bannon has raised the possibility of a third Trump term.
“A question that I’ve never seen fully resolved is to what degree Bannon is just trying to get attention as a media figure and to what degree he’s actually clued in to what’s going on in the White House,” said HeatMap News correspondent Matthew Zeitlin.
However, Bannon was in the know about Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election well before it happened. Days before the vote, he was recorded telling right-wing allies that “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory... He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Others said that Bannon’s prognosis about a third Trump term is gravely serious, especially given Trump’s other actions during his second term.
“I would love to be wrong, but they keep saying this in public,” said writer John DiLillo. “He’s selling Trump 2028 merch. He’s massively remodeling the White House as if it were his personal residence. I don’t really see why the idea shouldn’t be taken seriously just because it’s ‘unconstitutional.’”
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, meanwhile, said: “They’re literally shouting it out loud! Their plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it. And the media are just ignoring it, or worse, normalizing it; the biggest story perhaps in modern American history.”
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