Column: Donald Trump’s second presidency delivers a diktat a day

At a televised town hall in 2023, Sean Hannity gave Donald Trump a chance to dispel fears that he’d abuse power if given another spin as president. Trump sort-of obliged: He’d be a dictator, he said, just “for Day 1.”

Supporters insisted he was only joking with his use of “dictator.” Critics took him seriously; he had, after all, tried to stay in power after losing reelection. And they scoffed at the idea that Trump — a “wannabe dictator” and “fascist to the core,” according to the general he made the nation’s top military officer in his first term — would be content with a single day of power regardless of Congress, the courts, federal law or the Constitution.

The critics, including retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, were right. And the joke, alas, is on all Americans, as well as millions abroad who look to the United States as the global bastion of democracy and stability.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

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In the two weeks since Trump took the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution (he didn’t put his hand on the Bible), it’s been a diktat a day, often more than one. Thousands of protected federal employees have been sacked or threatened with job losses, funds mandated by law were frozen and efforts are afoot to shutter departments created by statute.

The nation is in the midst of a rolling constitutional crisis.

Though the founders charged presidents to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” the nation’s first convicted felon turned commander in chief has no time or patience for the process of passing laws or repealing those he doesn’t like. He’s choosing to be a strong man, exactly what the anti-monarchical founders were trying to prevent.

As outrageous as it was, Trump’s Day 1 clemency for his nearly 1,600 fellow Jan. 6 insurrectionists was at least within a president’s express powers, as are tariffs. Much else is not.

In keeping China-controlled TikTok alive here, apparently because he believes it helped him get elected, Trump is defying a law that was approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court. With a Sharpie stroke, he purported to strike down the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. A Ronald Reagan-appointed judge temporarily blocked him, saying the order “just boggles my mind.”

Trump is blatantly ignoring Congress’ power of the purse, a prerogative so elementary it’s kids’ stuff; see “Schoolhouse Rock.” His order freezing nearly all federal spending caused chaos here and abroad that didn’t fully abate despite rulings from separate federal judges in Washington and Rhode Island to lift the freeze. Administration officials afterward rescinded a memo calling for the freeze, yet allegedly continued to enforce a funds cutoff in some instances. As U.S. Dist. Judge Loren AliKhan scolded in a new, 30-page order on Monday in Washington, Team Trump was trying “to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct.”

Trump broke federal law on his first Friday by firing 18 inspectors general — the independent overseers who monitor agencies for the very waste, fraud and abuse that he says he wants to root out — without giving Congress a 30-day notice and justifications. Violating legal protections for civil service employees, his teams have been purging senior Justice Department prosecutors and investigators and targeting thousands of FBI agents nationwide who were assigned to probe the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. They should be commended, not cashiered.

Can’t say candidate Trump didn’t warn us. Before the election, some Trump voters denied he’d go so far. He’s going so far.

One of Trump’s greatest abuses of power is his empowerment of the unelected and unconfirmed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and donor of more than a quarter-billion to the Trump campaign. In recent days, the American oligarch’s self-selected teams have literally invaded the Treasury Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and now the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. At the Treasury, they seized control of government-wide payments systems, getting access to Americans’ personal data and provoking a longtime, respected career official to quit.

Why pick on relatively small-potatoes USAID? Its budget is under $50 billion, but the agency is the world’s largest provider of food aid and thus a key source of the nation’s soft power. A good guess for Musk’s motives: China doesn’t like USAID, given its influence in countries Beijing wants to dominate, and Musk wants China to like him, so he can expand his business interests there. Thousands of USAID workers worldwide are now off the job — along with senior officials who tried to stop the illegal purge — and humanitarian care for countless millions has stopped.

On Monday, Musk claimed on his X site that he had Trump’s blessing: “I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down.” Someone else approved: Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Musk’s takeover “a smart move.” Like China, Russia feels threatened by America’s global good works.

Where’s the outrage?

“Do I want Congress to exercise its right and power as a coequal branch of the federal government? Yes, I do,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, a senior Republican, lamely told reporters who peppered him Monday about the Treasury and USAID incursions. “You’re asking the right questions.”

Yet he and other Republicans are doing nothing, leaving Trump virtually unchecked. They’re either cheering or staying mute for fear of retribution from him or MAGA voters — “the leg-breakers back home,” in the doleful words of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. They’re forfeiting Congress’ constitutional status as a coequal branch of government, with unique legislative and spending powers. And Senate Republicans are confirming manifestly unfit toadies for Trump’s Cabinet, who pay lip service to the law but obey Trump.

“Whole lotta big cases coming the federal judiciary’s way,” conservative Stanford Law professor Orin Kerr warned this week. But litigation and appeals all the way to the Supreme Court take time. And outcomes are uncertain.

In the meantime, we just keep counting Trump’s days as dictator.

@jackiekcalmes