The idea that the United States awaits some dread constitutional crisis has become commonplace. For lawyers, such a crisis would likely involve Donald Trump’s administration defying the Supreme Court on some critical ruling. But other crises are readily imaginable. Might President Trump invoke the Militia Act to manipulate the 2026 congressional elections, or order the Marines to take sites in Greenland without congressional approval, which seems ever more plausible after the June 22 bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities?
Such scenarios are not unfounded, but they do not diagnose our true malady. Our ongoing constitutional crisis began with the presidential election last November 5. Reelecting an individual culpable for January 6 who has twice made a mockery of the presidential oath of office is itself a constitutional crisis. Nothing in his past or current behavior suggests that Trump has ever felt fidelity to his constitutional duties.
Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system. Instead, we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities.
Posted by jackspencer28
2 Comments
Interesting article that argues there is no coming constitutional crisis under Trump, but that the constitution has already failed due to the failure of Congress and the Supreme Court to check Trump’s excesses early and often (with the argument that checking executive power is the key feature of our constitutional order).
It doesn’t go into after Trump but I think the implication is also that, even once Trump is out of office, he has shown future presidents that they can get away with just about anything.
No one has either the power or the will to stop him. The bottom of our government has rotted and fell out. I don’t know what to say in the face of just resigning out of despair.
This must be what Russians must have felt like in 1999 onwards