April is the cruelest month, because that’s when the rule of law finally collapsed.
I don’t mean that criminal gangs now run riot and law-abiding citizens cower behind bushes. For the most part, police maintain order and life goes on as usual. But at the same time, the Trump administration has crossed the Rubicon, and they rule America not as a rule-based democracy, but an autocracy.
Of course, the most obvious, and the most egregious, examples of the Trump administration’s lawlessness would be the deportation of more than 250 people without a shred of due process to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, one of the most brutal prisons in existence. Despite admitting that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador through an “administrative error, he continues to languish in El Salvador, even though the Supreme Court has said the government must “facilitate” his return.
The opinion by the Fourth Circuit of Appeals, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, perfectly sums how far the Trump administration has strayed from America’s fundamental values:
The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. . . If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?
Judge Wilkinson is neither alarmist nor exaggerating. Trump said that his administration is looking at how to deport “homegrowns” to El Salvador (he even suggested they should build five more prisons). And one Trump advisor, Sebastian Gorka, floated the notion that supporting Abrego Garcia is prosecutable “because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.” Anyone protesting the Trump administration’s “mistakenly” deporting Abrego Garcia and then refusing to follow judicial orders could find themselves sharing a cell with this man in a hellish prison.
Every day, it seems, brings more examples of Trump’s weaponizing government against his enemies. On April 9, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate two people who defied him: Miles Taylor, who wrote an anonymous opinion piece in 2018 detailing internal resistance to Trump’s more bizarre policies, and Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who played a major role in debunking Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Trump’s vindictiveness extended to firing the executive director of the Office of Trade Relations at Customs and Border Protection, George E. Bogden, because he is friends with Taylor and attended his wedding.
Most recently, the FBI arrested Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan and Former Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano along with his wife. Both are charged with impeding the administration’s immigration crackdown. Trump also ordered the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the Democrats’ main fundraising platform, and his campaign against law firms who have somehow offended him continues (although a judge struck down the order against Perkins Coie as unconstitutional).
Outrageous as these examples seem, Trump and his legal team carefully gave each a veneer of legality.
FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, claims that “Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.” ActBlue ostensibly broke the law by allowing illegal campaign donations. Taylor may have improperly disseminated “classified information.” And Trump invokes a statute — the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — to justify deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Each of these incidents — and more — has gotten significant attention from the news media. But two moves in early April did not garner much attention, but may be worse, because both openly drop the pretense of acting according to law.
In April 2024, Congress passed a bill mandating that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the app by Jan. 19, 2025, or else it will be banned from the United States. Trump likes TikTok, and so, the day after he was inaugurated, he signed an executive order pausing the TikTok ban and granting immunity to any company selling the product. The original law, however, contained no provisions for suspending the ban while negotiations proceeded.
The deadline arrived without any resolution, and so, on April 4, Trump issued another executive order once more extending the deadline. But this time, Trump makes explicit that he is not bound to obey any law that he thinks “represents an encroachment on the powers of the Executive.”
In other words, Trump claims he can ignore any statute passed by Congress if he so desires.
Then, on April 9, Trump issued another executive order, this time “rescinding Energy Conservation Program: Definition of Showerhead, 86 Fed. Reg. 71797 (December 20, 2021).” At first glance, Trump may have a point. Surely a 13,000 word definition of “showerhead” is overkill. As Trump notes, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “showerhead” with one, short sentence (“A perforated nozzle or cap from which the water sprays out in a shower”).
The point of the extended definition was to limit “the prospect of limitless water usage in many showerhead products,” but not having sufficient water pressure annoyed Trump, because, he claimed, he could not properly wash his “beautiful” hair.
Retracting a rule that has been in place for years, however, requires the same extensive process as creating a rule, including a “reasoned” explanation and a “notice-and-comment” period.
Trump has no patience for such niceties, and so, he does away with them. And here Trump finally says the silent part out loud: “Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.”
Perhaps because there were fewer practical barriers stopping rulers from doing what they wanted, Renaissance writers thought long and hard about what tyranny means, and what they came up is a bit surprising.
They did not define a tyrant as someone who governs unjustly and arbitrarily, or maintains power through violence. Instead, a tyrant rules by will instead of law. “The main object of a tyrant,” wrote the great Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, “is to follow his own caprices.” The Elizabethan political scientist, Thomas Starkey, asked, “what is more repugnant to nature than a whole nation to be governed by the will of a prince?” For John Locke, a legitimate king accepts limits on his power, while the tyrant “makes all give way to his own will and appetite.”
And that is where we are today. With these two actions, Donald Trump has crossed the Rubicon. While many of Trump’s executive orders have been shot down in court, such as suspending birthright citizenship (the Supreme Court will hear the case in May) and using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people to El Salvador, Trump has shown that he can, and will, ignore the law when it suits him.
While Trump claims he would “never defy the Supreme Court,” that is not true. The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet he remains in El Salvador.
When Trump can set aside a law he doesn’t like without the slightest resistance from Congress, when the justification for rescinding a regulation is “because I said so,” we are no longer governed by law, but by will. We now live in a tyranny.
And if there was any doubt, Trump laid them to rest when Kristen Welker asked on “Meet the Press” if he was obligated to uphold the Constitution. Trump replied (notwithstanding the Oath of Office), “I don’t know.”
The only question is how much damage Trump causes before the rule of law is restored.
If it is restored.
Peter C. Herman is a professor of English literature at San Diego State University. He has published books on Shakespeare, Milton and the literature of terrorism, and essays in Salon, Newsweek, Inside Higher Ed, and Times of San Diego. His latest book is “Early Modern Others: Resisting Bias in Renaissance Literature” (Routledge).
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Opinion: Ignoring laws and courts, Trump crosses a legal Rubicon )
Also on site :
- Hamas executes Palestinians for looting as desperation grows under Israeli blockade
- ALM vs GGL Dream11 Prediction Today Match, Dream11 Team Today, Fantasy Cricket Tips, Playing XI, Pitch Report, Injury Update- Kuwait T10 Challengers League 2025, Match 32
- South Sacramento standoff ends with suspect surrendering to SWAT officers