Photograph Source: dsgetch – CC BY 2.0
“Trump’s actions against the federal bureaucracy are significant and worth watching as they unfold in the courts and political arena. They are not a constitutional emergency, and casting them as such will diminish the force of such warnings if they are needed.”
– Jason Willick, The Washington Post, “The constitutional emergency that isn’t,” February 8, 2025.
It is difficult to keep up with Donald Trump’s challenges to U.S. democracy, and it is similarly difficult to keep up with the Washington Post’s denial of the challenges. On the heels of an editorial that suggested it would be useful to allow Elon Musk and his minions into the Pentagon to begin a process of military reform, a Post editorial denies that the United States is facing a constitutional challenge. Bret Stephens, a senior columnist with the New York Times, is in the same camp as Willick in terms of denying the constitutional crisis and preferring to give Trump benefit of the doubt.
Willick argues that Trump has not engaged in any intrusion on Congress’s power of the purse to rival President Joe Biden’s efforts to forgive hundreds of billions of student loans without authorization. It is frustrating that Willick did not say that Biden’s actions were overturned by the Supreme Court and that Biden immediately obeyed. As for Trump’s blanket clemency for those who violently attacked the Capitol and seriously injured Capitol police on January 6th, well that was “perfectly legal,” according to Willick.
It is noteworthy that when Biden left the White House and Trump returned, the busts and portraits of Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr, were removed, and the portrait of Andrew Jackson, a White supremacist, was returned. Jackson, who is one of Trump’s favorite presidents along with William McKinley, is reputed to have said, in response to a Supreme Court decision that favored Indian tribes over the state of Georgia, that “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” Vice President J.D. Vance has suggested that it might be fine to refuse to do so, saying that that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” So much for the Constitution and the separation of powers.
Not even Trump’s illegal removal of 17 or 18 inspectors general meets Willick’s test of a legitimate challenge to the Constitution. In fact, Willick says that Trump’s White House is in “its strongest constitutional position, when it comes to the removal of inspectors general at the most important agencies and departments.” Willick ignores the fact that the law requires a 30-day notice be provided to Congress before removal of a statutory inspector general, and that a valid cause be provided for such a firing. Instead, he cites the 2020 case of v. Scalia v. CFPB that confirms the president’s virtually unlimited discretion to remove most executive-branch officers.
It is difficult to keep up with all of the laws and statutes that Trump has shredded in less than a month. In a 72-hour period, Trump has managed to stop most foreign aid; eliminate federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; and place a freeze on “all federal financial assistance,” such as grants and loans to state agencies. It is ironic that the people who will suffer the most from these fiats are presumably the same people who played a role in putting Trump into power. Trump doesn’t have to worry about accountability because he has removed inspectors general, and the courts thus far have not stopped his ability to rescind spending previously authorized by Congress.
Trump and his acolytes argue that he is the leader of the executive branch of government and, as a result, the U.S. work force belong to him and owe their loyalty to him personally. Current applicants to the civil service have to declare their loyalty to him; current employees who challenge his applicants are simply dismissed as members of the “deep state.” In this way, Trump is challenging the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which reformed the civil service following the political abuse and illegalities of the Reconstruction Period. The Pendleton Act made it illegal to fire or demote government officials for political reasons.
Not since President Woodrow Wilson had to rely on Colonel Edward House to manage the government has an American president had to rely on someone as arrogant and authoritarian as Elon Musk to conduct a campaign of “shock and awe” against the agencies and departments of the entire federal work force. Wilson had suffered a stroke so he wasn’t up to the task. Trump’s case is different; he has no understanding of the workings of the government, other than wanting to reduce it and to those he believes undermined him in his first term—the so-called “deep state.” Trump is testing the American people and their institutions and, thus far, we are losing.
