A Vengeful President who Doesn’t Give a Damn About Our Laws and Constitution
Special Note
The next No Kings marches will be held in two days on March 28. There are more than 3,000 events scheduled across all 50 states this Saturday. One of the goals of the organizers is to exceed the 7 million people that showed up for the last No Kings marches. You can find a No Kings event to attend by clicking here, scrolling down to “Find an Event Near You” and entering your zip code.
— Fred Wertheimer
A Vengeful President who Doesn’t Give a Damn About Our Laws and Constitution
Donald Trump is a vengeful President who doesn’t give a damn about the laws of the land and our foundational Constitution. He has repeatedly shown a willingness to ignore legal or constitutional
constraints.
This pattern predates his presidency. From 1973 until his election in 2016, Trump and his business empire reportedly were involved in more than 4000 legal lawsuits.
He was found liable in 2023 for sexual abuse in one case and found liable for business fraud in another. In 2024, Trump was criminally convicted of 34 felony counts of business violations in one case and found liable for defamation in another.
Trump Keeps Being Blocked in the Lower Courts
In just 15 months of his second term, there have been more than 150 lawsuits in which the lower courts have used preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders to stop administration efforts. Hundreds of additional cases are pending against Trump and the administration. Meanwhile, Trump and his administration keep plowing ahead without any concern for our laws.
Last month, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs, meaning that $175 billion collected from American companies and individuals was found unlawful and should be returned.
Just last week, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on media reporting, writing, “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”
Trump’s Vicious Revenge and Retaliation Attempts
Some 470 individuals and institutions have been targeted for retribution under Trump’s leadership, including 58 targeted as “saboteurs” of Trump’s elections, according to a study by Reuters.
Trump has used his direct control of the Justice Department for widespread attempts at personal revenge and retaliation. His presidential abuse of the legal process and his constant use of the Justice Department as a weapon are without precedent.
Trump accused former President Obama of treason and called on the Justice Department to target Obama. He also called on the Justice Department to investigate President Joe Biden. In 2023, he called for the execution of former Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley.
Trump and his agents have also pressed for investigations and/or indictments of former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Director Christopher Wray, former Special Counsel Jack Smith, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, former CIA head John Brennan, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook, Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Elissa Slotkin, and Reps. Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio, among others.
This all amounts to an unprecedented abuse of power, of our law enforcement system and of our laws by Trump. This mirrors how authoritarian heads use state power to target political opponents.
Trump Treats the U.S. Constitution Like Scrap Paper
Trump treats our Constitution like scrap paper and throws it away on a whim.
He doesn’t like birthright citizenship, so he issued an executive order ending it. The Constitution, however, unequivocally requires that individuals born on U.S. soil are citizens. Four federal district court judges in four cases have blocked the executive order and the constitutional issues will be argued in the Supreme Court on April 1.
The Constitution makes clear that the states and Congress are authorized to administer our elections and provides no role to the executive branch or the President. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from issuing an executive order last year setting his own rules for elections.
Federal Judge Kollar-Kotelly blocked Trump’s executive order, writing that the Framers “entrusted” the power over election rules “to the parts of our government that they believed would be most responsive to the will of the people: first to the States, and then, in some instances, to Congress. They assigned no role at all to the President.”
The Constitution plainly prohibits Trump from running for a third time, but he keeps raising the idea that he may run again. He cannot.
Trump and his administration brazenly tried to cancel federal grants based on recipients living in states that did not vote for Trump. Federal district court judge Amir Mehta struck down these cancellations, stating that this was a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
President Trump is anti-democratic, anti-Constitution, anti-rule of law, anti-judge, anti-court.
He keeps pushing beyond the boundaries and the responses cannot be left to litigation alone. They won’t be. As the No Kings marches will demonstrate on March 28, we are a country where “here the people rule,” not some wannabe dictator.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
