by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Is this what makes America great again?

• Government withdrawing, or threatening to withdraw, funding based on engagement in policies decreed by the President to be illegal (no legislation or court action)
  • DEI—numerous universities
  • Trans athletes—Maine
• President, by decree, overriding state election laws.
• President, by decree, sanctioning law firms whose members have represented entities that have represented clients who have sued the government or who have been involved in investigations against him as a private citizen. Those sanctions include stripping members of security clearances, withdrawing contracts from firms represented by those firms, and forbidding the firms’ lawyers from entering federal property, including courthouses. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.
• President orders Department of Justice to investigate individuals, not on suspicion of crime, but because they were critical of him.
• Masked federal officers seize woman on street and hold her in detention without charges.
• Federal authorities sweep up alleged criminals and fly them to another country to be held in prison, without any court proceedings. (In some countries, this is called “disappearing.”) Later admitting that there was a court order prohibiting deportation of one of those removed.
• President breaks treaty he helped negotiate and imposes tariffs on country’s top trading parties.
• President declares long-standing trade deficits a “national emergency” and imposes sweeping tariffs on all countries, including close allies.
• By decree, President “clarifies” U.S. Constitution in clear contravention to U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
• U.S. officials deliberately falsifying federal records.
• President orders all grant programs, previously authorized by law, to be paused until administration can determine if the programs align with the President’s agenda.
• Executive agencies cancelling programs and funding established by Congress in law. (See here for one example.)
• Investors selling off U.S. bonds, usually considered a “safe haven” for investors.

Before you answer, consider:

1. What your answer would be if the President were someone of the opposite party; and
2. The precedents that would be set for any other president, i.e. a Democrat, if the courts uphold these actions.

Finally, can anyone identify a period in this country’s history (“again”) when such actions were considered to have made America great?