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Tag: Donald Trump

  • How a Professional Bully Is Winning Control of the Media

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    Original article by Steven Harper republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool/Getty Images)

    Major media outlets from CBS to The Washington Post have “bent the knee” to President Trump’s specious demands.

    U.S. President Donald Trump is following the authoritarian’s handbook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used to consolidate power in Hungary. He is attacking the independent institutions that comprise the infrastructure supporting democracy—universities, law firms, culture, and the media.

    And he is winning.

    Major media outlets have “bent the knee” his press secretary’s preferred phrase for capitulation to Trump’s specious demands. His latest conquest is CBS.

    CBS

    Days before the 2024 election, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit accusing the network of bias in broadcasting a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Seeking $10 billion in damages, the complaint claimed that the edited interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in Harris’ favor.

    Prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said that “the First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation.” Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet called it “ridiculous junk and should be mocked.” Attorney Charles Tobin warned, “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”

    A few days later, Trump won the election. And now CBS’ parent company, Paramount, wants to settle the case.

    Whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion.

    Through her family’s holding company, Shari Redstone who is “friendly with Trump” is Paramount’s controlling shareholder. If the Federal Communications Commission approves its pending merger with Skydance Media, Redstone will reap millions.

    On February 6, Redstone told the Paramount board that she wanted to settle Trump’s lawsuit. The next day, Trump doubled his damages claim to $20 billion. As the media reported Redstone’s desire to resolve the case, Trump pounced. On April 13, he asserted on social media that the FCC should impose “the maximum fine and punishment” on CBS and the network “should lose its license.”

    The parties have agreed on a mediator, but whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion. The more profound cost is the loss of CBS’ journalistic independence, which became apparent on April 22 when the producer of “60 Minutes” resigned.

    In the program’s 57-year history, Bill Owens—who became the “60 Minutes” executive producer in 2019 after 30 years at CBS—was only the third person to run it. Owens’s memo to his staff should be a warning to all of us:

    “[O]ver the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

    CBS wasn’t Trump’s first media victim.

    The Washington Post

    In early November 2024, The Washington Post editorial board had signed off on an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. But it never ran. Owner Jeff Bezos personally killed it and, for the first time in decades, the paper did not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate.

    A few hours after Bezos’s “no endorsement” decision became public, officials from his Blue Origin aerospace company, which has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA, met with Trump.

    After Trump won the election, Bezos flew to Mar-a-Lago where he and his fiancée dined with the president-elect. Shortly thereafter, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. And another Bezos company—Amazon—paid $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, who personally will receive $28 million.

    On February 26, Bezos announced a new rightward shift for the Post: It would now advocate for “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.

    The paper’s opinion section editor, David Shipley, resigned in response to the change. Prominent columnists followed him out the door, and more than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.

    The Los Angeles Times

    The Los Angeles Times had an established record of presidential endorsements too—until 2024. Its 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden blasted Trump. But in 2024, billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong quashed an editorial that would have endorsed Vice President Harris. As at the Post, columnists and editorial board members resigned in protest, and the paper lost thousands of subscribers.

    After the election, Soon-Shiong killed another editorial set to run with this headline: “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.”

    Self-censorship is the most effective, enduring, and dangerous method of abridging free speech.

    Facebook

    More than one-half of Americans “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media. One-third of all adults in the U.S. get their news from Facebook (operated by Meta). Meta’s president Mark Zuckerberg was among the billionaires who traveled to Mar-a-Lago after the election, met with Trump, and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. (With the help of corporate and billionaire megadonors like Zuckerberg and Bezos, Trump raised a record $239 million for the fund.)

    Then Zuckerberg gave Trump a bigger gift: Meta abandoned third-party fact-checking of Facebook posts. As his rationale, Zuckerberg repeated Trump’s false talking points that fact-checking was “censorship” and reflected an “anti-Trump bias.”

    Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was “directly responding to the threats” that Trump had made to him in the past, Trump answered: “Probably.”

    Meanwhile, Meta invited Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, to join its board of directors.

    PBS and NPR

    On April 26, Trump will send Congress his request to halt all funding for public media—including NPR and PBS.

    Viktor Orbán’s Playbook—The Trump Sequel

    Since his return to power, Hungary’s prime minister has used “muscular state policy to achieve conservative ends,” according to conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Orbán is “attempting to rebuild its culture and institutions, from schools to universities to media.”

    Orbán began “working with friendly oligarchs to purchase and transform media companies into conservative stalwarts; directing government advertising budgets to politically-aligned outlets;… and pressuring the holdover state media… to provide more favorable coverage.”

    Rufo insists that Hungary “has a media environment at least as competitive as that of many Western nations.” Experienced observers disagree:

    Human Rights Watch found that the government is using its near media monopoly to strengthen its hold on democratic institutions… The government’s increased control over the media market is linked to its broader assault on rule of law in Hungary, including undermining judicial independence and state capture of public institutions…

    Trump’s attacks on universities, law firms, culture, and the media are all of a piece. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary provides a roadmap of his battle plan and a preview of his end game.

    Original article by Steven Harper republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
    Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

  • ‘Sick’: Trump Marks Earth Day With Layoff Notice for Hundreds of EPA Staff

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Demonstrators march during a “Hands off the EPA” rally outside the Environmental Protection Agency office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Earth Day, April 22, 2025. (Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The only people who will benefit from their firings are corporate polluters.”

    As defenders of the planet marked Earth Day with pledges to fight the destructive agenda of U.S. President Donald Trump, some green groups on Tuesday responded with alarm to the administration’s plans for layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency.

    Several news outlets obtained the notice that EPA Assistant Deputy Administrator Travis Voyles sent on Monday evening to staffers with the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well as regional EJ divisions, warning of a reduction in force (RIF) that will cut 280 employees and reassign about 175 others this summer.

    “This action is necessary to align our workforce with the agency’s current and future needs and to ensure the efficient and effective operation of our programs,” Voyles said. “With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

    The Washington Post noted that “the news comes months after the agency placed 171 of the office’s employees on administrative leave and then reversed course, reinstating dozens of regional employees in offices across the country,” and as decision-makers at the EPA have been weighing how to implement Trump’s executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

    “It’s a gut punch but long expected,” said an employee who was put on leave in February and spoke with the Post on the condition of anonymity. “Announcing a RIF of the EJ program on the eve of Earth Day is sick and shows exactly who they are.”

    Joyce Howell, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238 that represents over 8,400 EPA workers nationwide, toldReuters that “decimating our agency and environmental justice workforce goes against our oath to protect human health and to keep our planet healthy and habitable for future generations.”

    In a Tuesday statement, Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous similarly said that “the Trump administration is determined to destroy the stated mission of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect human health and the environment. All of us deserve to have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, and be protected from toxic pollution.”

    “Instead, the Trump administration is selling us out to corporate polluters by actively working to slash clean air and water protections and laying off critical environmental justice staff,” he continued. “The people that Donald Trump is putting out of work are hardworking, dedicated civil servants who have devoted their careers to protecting our clean air and water and securing a livable future for us all. The only people who will benefit from their firings are corporate polluters.”

    Chitra Kumar, a former official with the impacted EPA office who’s now managing director at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement that “the layoff notice sent to employees claimed their dismissal would ‘better advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,’ which is the height of hypocrisy given that these staffers are working to reduce pollution and toxins in the communities suffering the most harm.”

    “Scientific data shows that, due to historic and ongoing injustices, communities overburdened by polluting industries, smog-forming traffic, and contaminated waterways and soil are predominantly low-income, Black, Brown, and Indigenous. Exposure to consistently higher levels of pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart and lung ailments, cancer, and even death,” said Kumar, who took aim at EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

    “Zeldin and the Trump administration continue to focus on propping up the profits of coal, oil, and gas companies and other big polluters who take advantage of every loophole available at the expense of public health. This is about all of us, our children, and grandchildren,” she stressed. “If Administrator Zeldin goes forward with this destructive move, he will be responsible for ending decades of work intended to help set right the harmful legacy of pollution in overburdened communities in a handout to big polluters.”

    Kumar pointed out that “this is also part of the Trump administration’s larger ongoing strategy to dismantle EPA and its core functions and undermine its very mission, which is to help keep all people in America safe. In the time ahead, Zeldin is expected to launch a repeal, or ‘no enforce’ order, for a host of science-backed environmental regulations and engage in a wholesale ‘reorganization’ of the agency, including gutting the Research and Development Office that produces science undergirding EPA decisions.”

    As criticism of Zeldin and Trump’s plans for the EPA mounted, people protested against the administration in communities across the country. Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in a statement that “Donald Trump, backed by fossil fuel billionaires, is waging a full-scale assault on the very lifesaving protections that Earth Day was created to demand.”

    While Republicans currently control the White House and both chambers of Congress, some elected Democrats used Earth Day to advocate for policies that would protect the planet. Multiple senators used the day to promote bills that would protect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from offshore oil and gas drilling.

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
    Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

  • Civil Rights Coalition Launches Unity Pact to Defend Against Trump Assault on Nonprofits

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Thousands of demonstrators rally against the Trump administration in Chicago, Illinois, on April 19, 2025. (Photo: Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “When any of our organizations are unjustly targeted, we will stand as a unified coalition,” the groups said. “An attack on one is an attack on all.”

    A coalition of 75 civil rights groups on Monday responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s “escalating threats and actions” targeting nonprofit organizations by launching “The Pact: A Civil Rights Coalition Unity Commitment.”

    Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the groups represent “millions of people of every background in every ZIP code across America, exist to serve our communities, protect rights, and advance opportunity for all,” the pact explains. “Today we face a campaign by the government to silence and isolate us, stop us from doing our jobs, and hurt the people we serve.”

    “The administration has made clear it will attack organizations that speak truth to power, defend the vulnerable, petition and sue the government, preserve and share knowledge, and fight for our freedoms,” notes the statement, which came amid rumors of an attack on climate groups’ tax-exempt status and after a GOP-led effort in Congress attacking anti-genocide campaigners. “They want us to fight alone, hoping we’ll stay silent as others are targeted. Not us.”

    “The administration has made clear it will attack organizations that speak truth to power, defend the vulnerable, petition and sue the government, preserve and share knowledge, and fight for our freedoms.”

    “Today, we commit to stay united in our shared vision for opportunity, prosperity, dignity, belonging, and for the rights and justice necessary to ensure them,” the coalition declared. “We represent people who are Black, White, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous, from cities, suburbs, and rural communities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, workers, women, immigrants, and people of all ethnicities, faiths, ages, and backgrounds.”

    Signatories are focused on issues including quality healthcare, fair wages and working conditions, “freedom to learn our full history and celebrate our cultures,” quality education, affordable housing, a just justice system, clean air and water, voting rights, discrimination protection, family care, hunger prevention, reproductive freedom, and privacy.

    The coalition includes the American Federation of Teachers, Arab American Institute, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Lambda Legal, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Women’s Law Center, Oxfam America, Public Citizen, Reproductive Freedom for All, and others.

    “The government is targeting organizations that help people assert their rights and access basic services,” the pact states. “They want to operate without oversight or consequences as they dismantle and privatize public services, attack government workers, and concentrate even more profit and power in the hands of the wealthy.”

    “We have witnessed outrageous attacks on our work,” the statement continues, citing investigations of nonprofits, terminated grants, law firms fearing retribution, threats to revoke tax-exempt status, and the weaponization of civil rights laws. “We will not be divided. We will not be intimidated into silence or abandoning our communities.”

    The coalition members pledged:

    • When any of our organizations are unjustly targeted, we will stand as a unified coalition. An attack on one is an attack on all.
    • We will share knowledge, resources, and support with any organization threatened by abuses of power.
    • We will not abandon our missions or self-censor out of fear. The people we serve depend on us now more than ever.

    In addition to the pact, the groups shared a pledge that supporters can sign, a mobilization calendar, and an open letter to the American people, which says that “the Trump administration is intentionally attacking any business; law firm; college, university, or school; and organization or government watchdog that disagrees with its policies or challenges its abuses and corruption. And it is scaring into silence legitimate, lawful demands and legal challenges, which are fundamental to our civil rights and our democracy.”

    “Throughout our history, Americans have resisted power grabs that threaten our rights and freedoms,” the letter stresses. “Today, we must resist again—together.”

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

  • Harvard Suit: Trump Admin Punishing University for ‘Protecting Its Constitutional Rights’

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    A demonstrator holds a sign after a rally against U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 17, 2025.  (Photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Indiscriminately slashing medical, scientific, and technological research undermines the nation’s ability to save American lives, foster American success, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation.”

    Harvard University sued multiple federal agencies and members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet on Monday over a $2.2 billion funding “freeze” and reported plans to cut off another $1 billion, implemented in response to the nation’s oldest higher education institution rejecting the administration’s escalating demands.

    In addition to the funding cuts, the Trump administration has “initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” said Alan Garber, the university’s president, in a statement. “These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”

    “Research that the government has put in jeopardy includes efforts to improve the prospects of children who survive cancer.”

    “The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Garber explained. “Research that the government has put in jeopardy includes efforts to improve the prospects of children who survive cancer, to understand at the molecular level how cancer spreads throughout the body, to predict the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, and to ease the pain of soldiers wounded on the battlefield.”

    “As opportunities to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease are on the horizon, the government is slamming on the brakes,” he continued. “The victims will be future patients and their loved ones who will suffer the heartbreak of illnesses that might have been prevented or treated more effectively. Indiscriminately slashing medical, scientific, and technological research undermines the nation’s ability to save American lives, foster American success, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation.”

    Noting the Trump administration’s attempt to justify funding cuts by citing Harvard’s response to discrimiation against Jewish people, Garber said that “as a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism,” and pledged to “fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law.” He also promised to soon release task force reports about combating antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

    The university president’s lengthy message included a link to the 51-page complaint, filed in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts. The defendants are the General Services Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Justice, along with the leaders of those agencies.

    Like Garber’s statement, the complaint highlights the sweeping impacts of “the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard” and other higher education institutions.

    “Defendants’ actions threaten Harvard’s academic independence and place at risk critical lifesaving and pathbreaking research that occurs on its campus,” the filing states. “And they are part of a broader effort by the government to punish Harvard for protecting its constitutional rights.”

    “The government’s actions flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations,” the complaint argues, asking the court “to enjoin defendants from exceeding the bounds of their legal authority and to protect Harvard’s constitutional rights.”

    The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper, noted that the university “will be represented by Robert K. Hur ’95 and William A. Burck, both lawyers with deep ties to President Donald Trump. Hur was appointed to the United States Department of Justice by Trump in his first term, and Burck has served as counsel for the Trump Organization. Lawyers affiliated with law firms Ropes & Gray and Lehtosky Keller Cohn will also represent Harvard, according to the lawsuit.”

    The Ivy League university’s suit was filed the same day that a coalition of 75 groups, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, responded to Trump’s attacks on nonprofits by launching “The Pact: A Civil Rights Coalition Unity Commitment.”

    “We have witnessed outrageous attacks on our work,” the coalition’s pact states, citing investigations of nonprofits, terminated grants, law firms fearing retribution, threats to revoke tax-exempt status, and the weaponization of civil rights laws. “We will not be divided. We will not be intimidated into silence or abandoning our communities.”

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
    Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.

  • Failing to Rise to the Constitutional Crisis

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    Original article by Ari Paul republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    The Trump administration maintains that it can send people to overseas concentration camps with impunity  because “activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy” (BBC, 4/11/25).

    As the Trump administration openly defies court orders to return a man wrongfully deported to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, some American outlets are underplaying the significance of this constitutional crisis.

    In a unanimous decision the Supreme Court “declined to block a lower court’s order to ‘facilitate’ bringing back Kilmar Ábrego García,” a Salvadoran who had legal protections in the United States and was wrongfully sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT (BBC, 4/11/25).

    The White House is not complying (Democracy Docket, 4/14/25). “The federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” Trump’s Justice Department insists (CNN, 4/15/25). Fox News (4/16/25) said of Attorney General Pam Bondi: “Bondi Defiant, Says Ábrego García Will Stay in El Salvador ‘End of the Story.’”

    In an X post (4/15/25) filled with unproven assertions that skirt the question of due process and extraordinary rendition, Vice President J.D. Vance said, “The entire American media and left-wing industrial complex has decided the most important issue today is that the Trump admin deported an MS-13 gang member (and illegal alien).” (Are we supposed to believe that the six conservatives on the Supreme Court, three of whom were appointed by Trump, are a part of the “left-wing industrial complex?”)

    The complete disregard to constitutional protections of due process and to court orders should send alarm bells throughout American society. The MAGA movement condones sending unconvicted migrants to a foreign hellhole largely on grounds that they are not US citizens, and thus don’t have a right to constitutional due process. But the administration has floated the idea of doing the same thing to “homegrown” undesirables as well (Al Jazeera, 4/15/25).

    ‘An uncertain end’

    The New York Times (4/15/25) goes out on a limb and declares that the president defying the Supreme Court is “a path with an uncertain end.”

    The case is quite obviously not about the extremity or unpopularity of President Donald Trump’s policies, but a breaking point at which the executive branch has left the democratic confines of the Constitution, as many journalists and scholars have warned about. But the case is not necessarily being portrayed that way in the establishment press.

    In an article about the Trump administration’s record of resisting court orders, a New York Times subhead (4/15/25) read, “Scholars say that the Trump administration is now flirting with lawless defiance of court orders, a path with an uncertain end.” In an article about “What to Know About the Mistaken Deportation of a Maryland Man to El Salvador” (4/14/25), reporter Alan Feuer described the Supreme Court’s upholding the order to “facilitate” the return of Ábrego García as “complicated and rather ambiguous” rather than a “clear victory for the administration.”

    At the Washington Post (4/14/25), law professor Stuart Banner wrote an opinion piece saying that fears of a constitutional crisis were overblown, noting that while Trump is “famous for his contemptuous remarks about judges…tension between the president and the Supreme Court is centuries old.” Thus, he said, there are incentives in both branches to “not to let conflict ripen into public defiance.”

    The Wall Street Journal (4/15/25) presents the prospect of the White House defying a Supreme Court order as a “showdown” that Trump might “win.”

    The Wall Street Journal editorial board (4/15/25) said:

    Mr. Trump would be wise to settle all of this by quietly asking Mr. Bukele to return Mr. Ábrego García, who has a family in the US. But the president may be bloody-minded enough that he wants to show the judiciary who’s boss. If this case does become a judicial showdown, Mr. Trump may assert his Article II powers not to return Mr. Ábrego García, and the Supreme Court will be reluctant to disagree.

    But Mr. Trump would be smarter to play the long game. He has many, much bigger issues than the fate of one man that will come before the Supreme Court. By taunting the judiciary in this manner, he is inviting a rebuke on cases that carry far greater stakes.

    These articles display a naivete about the current moment. The Trump administration and its allies have flatly declared that they believe a judicial check on the executive authority wrongly places constitutional restraints on Trump’s desires (New York Times, 3/19/25; Guardian, 3/22/25).

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, responding to court rulings that went against MAGA desires, “warned that Congress’ authority over the federal judiciary includes the power to eliminate entire district courts,” Reuters (3/25/25) reported. The House also approved legislation, along party lines, that “limits the authority of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders, as Republicans react to several court rulings against the Trump administration” (AP, 4/9/25).

    In other words, Trump’s defiance of the courts is part of a broader campaign to assert that the Constitution simply should not be an impediment to his rule. That’s not a liberal versus conservative debate about national policy, but a declaration that the United States will no longer operate as a constitutional republic.

    ‘Constitutional crisis is here’

    “Think long and hard about what it means to have a president who gleefully ignores the courts,” urges Rex Huppke (USA Today, 4/15/25). “It’s time to stand up and shout ‘Hell no!’ right freakin’ now, and not a moment later.”

    Pieces like the ones at the Journal, Times and Post give readers the sense that this affair is just another quirk of the American system of checks and balances, when, in fact, history could look back and declare this the moment when the Constitution became a dead letter.

    Other outlets, however, appeared to appreciate the gravity of the situation. “America Is Dangerously Close to Being Run by a King Who Answers to No One” was the headline of Rex Huppke column at USA Today (4/15/25). “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here” was the headline of a recent piece by Adam Serwer at the Atlantic (4/14/25).

    This case will roil on, and both the judicial system (Reuters, 4/15/25) and congressmembers (NBC News, 4/16/25) are taking action. There’s still time for the papers to treat this case with the urgency that it deserves.

    FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.

    Original article by Ari Paul republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.