Trump’s disregard for US constitution is ‘a blitzkrieg on the law’
Scholars warn of the president’s lawlessness in actions such as federal funding freeze and birthright citizenship order
Donald Trump’s rapid-fire and controversial moves
that have ranged from banning birthright citizenship to firing 18 inspectors general means the US president
has shown a greater willingness than his predecessors to
violate the constitution and federal law,
some historians and legal scholars say.
These scholars pointed to other Trump actions they say blatantly broke the law,
such as freezing trillions of dollar in federal spending and dismissing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC),
-- even though they were confirmed by the Senate and had several years left in their terms.
“Without any doubt Donald Trump is the most lawless and scofflaw president we have ever seen in the history of the United States,”
said #Laurence #Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars
and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.
Tribe said Trump has carried out
“a blitzkrieg on the law and the constitution.
The very fact that the illegal actions have come out with the speed of a rapidly firing Gatling gun makes it very hard for people to focus on any one of them.
That’s obviously part of the strategy.”
Tribe said the so-called pause in federal spending that the Trump administration ordered last Monday
“was a clear usurpation of a coordinate branch’s [Congress’s] exclusive power of the purse”.
Before the Trump administration rescinded the freeze two days later,
several groups had sued to stop the freeze,
saying Trump had violated the constitution and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act,
which lets presidents withhold funds in limited circumstances,
but only if they first follow several special procedures
– which legal experts said Trump failed to do.
#Erwin #Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law,
also voiced dismay at what he said was Trump’s flagrant flouting of the law in his first few days back in office.
“A stunning number of his executive actions clearly violate the constitution and federal law,” Chemerinsky said.
“I cannot think of any president who has ever so ignored the constitution as extensively in the first 10 days of office as this.
“I certainly doubt that any president has done so much lawless so quickly that affects so many people,” Chemerinsky continued.
“The freeze of federal spending potentially affects tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people.”
That freeze caused alarm and chaos across the nation as it disrupted Medicaid payments,
childcare programs,
meals for seniors,
housing subsidies and
special ed programs.
Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the office of management and budget, said the freeze was needed to stop
“the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies”.
Federal judges moved quickly to temporarily block the spending freeze and the ban on birthright citizenship.
Last Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Washington DC, #Loren #AliKhan, suspended the spending freeze.
Facing huge confusion and criticism over the freeze,
the Trump administration rescinded it on Wednesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/01/trump-executive-orders-constitution-law?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
