The Grand Illusion
Trump’s Inaugural Address definitely set the tone for the next year, and possibly for the next four. Why do I say “possibly?”
For one thing, Trump has promised some things that, at least under the Constitution, he cannot do. Birthright citizenship was established by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but Trump’s legal advisors claim that the language of the amendment – “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — allows federal government not to recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status. One way or another, any government action to deny birthright citizenship will come before the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court agrees with such a broad interpretation, then some estimates show that as many as five million people in the U.S. could be affected. Even more important, such a ruling would also suggest that the Supreme Court would effectively be a rubber stamp for Trump, and that the government has the ability to circumvent the Constitution.
If the Supreme Court denies that interpretation, then Trump will be somewhat limited in what he can accomplish, although he now has the means to block almost all legal immigration and has already apparently closed the southern border.
Changing the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” is problematical, although he could conceivably require that name change on all maps and publications printed by the U.S. government, but he certainly doesn’t have the legal authority to require map-makers elsewhere to comply, even U.S. mapmakers.
And those are just the beginning of the struggles that Trump faces, which means “interesting” (in the worst way possible) years ahead for all of us.
LEM,
I’m sure you won’t lack for topics to address in this blog during the reign of Trump II – sad to say. I guess I should feel lucky to only have one characteristic subject to targeting by team Trump (Democratic Party). I’ll be well down the line for many, many others he has in his sights. As for all those amendments to the constitution, this SCOTUS (or at least 5 of them) really only believe in the first two as ones to enforce. And they seem to enforce aspects of those first two quite selectively. Sigh.
We should wait and see what actually happens rather than hyperventilating before the fact. If his administration makes mistakes, which they will, since they all do, then we can criticize those mistakes.
I like his claim that he wants more US manufacturing. I hope energy will be extracted responsibly. It would make more sense to me not to sell it to the whole world, but use it to reduce prices here and thereby make the US attractive to other countries’ manufacturers… particularly those in Germany which are moving to China due to high energy costs due to sanctions on Russia.
He said he’d try to be a unifier. I hope he does.
Not so much when he just pardoned (or commuted sentences) for 1500 Jan 6th rioters including Tarrio and Rhodes. If he didn’t get every one of them I’d guess it was from incompetence of his staff or he got tired signing the pardons (figuratively of course), but not through any sense of selective morality. So, there you have an actual action, not just a statement or slogan. Party of law and order, indeed.
Yes, there’s an “insurrection narrative” but:
Dictionary definition of Insurrection: A violent uprising against an authority or government.
I did not see that.
I don’t know the people you mention, and will look them up, but the videos I saw from ITV (British TV) were of people wandering around after having been let in by the police. Some windows were broken. One lady was killed by security, which seemed unnecessarily violent.
You obviously didn’t see everything… or your memory is incredibly selective.
That is quite possible.
The problem is that there so much propaganda on this topic I don’t trust anyone’s claims of anything. At this point I only trust what I see myself.
This is what pisses me off the most about all this polarization. People live in different worlds because they believe different talking heads who lie.
For instance, I see stuff saying that Trump is revoking birth right citizenship, that it is unconstitutional, and that 5 million people are affected and could lose their citizenship. Then I go read the article on the Whitehouse site and it says it will only apply to people born 30 days from now so not to 5 million people.
Then there’s COVID, where half the population thinks it was just a cold, and the other thinks the vaccine fixed it. Scientifically neither are true, but everyone is too busy lying to try to figure out the truth.
Similarly with climate change. There is some evidence of it, but all the “solutions” we are being sold won’t fix it.
I don’t want to belong to a tribe, be it blue, red or anything else. I don’t want to feel good that I’m one of the “good people”. I’m a boring STEM person who wants to know what happened. And this is impossible when everyone is repeating what their tribe says. If people just started focusing on figuring out the truth, we could get on and fix things.
You’re right in that the text of the Executive Order only applies to children born thirty days from the date of the order, but the impacts go beyond that. Many illegal immigrants, most likely millions, do not have legal status under the terms of the executive order, which means that even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for fifteen or twenty years, any children they have after that date would be denied birthright citizenship and at least theoretically could be deported, and the executive order could be used as yet another way of splitting families, and family splitting was something Trump already tried (so that part is hardly theoretical).
Also, French street riots aren’t exactly the same as an attack on the national capitol building with the aim of disrupting if not overturning the results of an election at the time votes were being certified.
Since 174 police officers were injured during the Jan. 6 Capitol incident, I think it qualifies as violent.
Maybe. French street protests are violent. We don’t dignify them with the word “insurrection”… and France doesn’t have mass shootings at schools. 15 police officers were hospitalized and all were out 5 days later.
There are more deaths in US school shootings than this “insurrection”. The reason the ruling class called it an insurrection was to be able to invoke the relevant laws to stamp hard on the people who participated. Political expediency doesn’t change what it is.
Since the violence was targeted at the transition to a new administration, I think that it qualifies as an insurrection.
The Presidency is particularly impacted by precedent and is far more malleable than the other branches. As egregious as Trump’s actions are, the precedents being set are far more concerning in it’s long term repercussions. The passing of law via executive order, while not exactly a new thing, has become so common that I can see Congress being an obsolete body at the mercy of the Executive.
Sadly, this is only one example. History will look back at this time period as the fall of American Democracy, much like the fall of the Roman Republic.
Yup, and for the exact same reasons. All the checks and balances in the world will fail against the over-ambitious and the aggressively autocratic if no one enforces them.
Who didn’t enforce them against Donald I, Emperor of Everything?* Congress, the Supreme Court, a small but sufficient plurality of the electorate…
*Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you! (Well, I don’t, but I clearly don’t count.)
I was reading in the NYT that stripping away birthright citizenship would potentially include Kamala Harris – which would be an “interesting” act of public theater.