Trump’s administration is trampling over constitutional and legal barriers to his agenda, endangering basics of bourgeois democracy that do need defending, argues John Clarke

During his inauguration speech, Donald Trump claimed that he had survived an attempt on his life because ‘I was saved by God to make America great again.’ Having elevated his presidency to the status of a Divine Mission, he seems to have concluded that his authority shouldn’t be subject to any of the normal legal restraints that are placed on the exercise of executive power.

Following a week in which senior representatives of his administration had questioned the right of the courts to block executive orders, Trump took to social media on 15 February and posted the claim that ‘he who saves his country does not violate any laws,’ It was quickly pointed out that the president was repeating an argument that no lesser figure than Napoleon Bonaparte had made in defence of his own imperial style of operating.

As many have noted, Trump has placed a premium on moving quickly and decisively to implement his agenda and he has done so with little regard for the inevitable voices of opposition. As Truthout has expressed it, he has taken ‘a wrecking ball to government agencies and programs that protect nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives.’ In response to these wide-ranging measures, states, as well as ‘public interest organizations, schools, doctors, unions, immigrants, federal workers and individuals have filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging Trump’s legal authority to take these actions. At least nine judges throughout the country have temporarily halted several of them.’

Defying the courts

These court-imposed restrictions ‘have put temporary holds on Trump’s attempts to: end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, freeze billions of dollars in federal spending appropriated by Congress, transfer incarcerated transgender women to men’s prisons, remove scientific data from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, give his de facto co-president Elon Musk unfettered access to sensitive Treasury Department records, and put 2,200 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employees on leave.’ Even though these orders are subject to appeal, they represent a significant impediment for Trump and his team.

The White House has denounced the legal oversight it has been subjected to as the work of ‘judicial activists’ but this has also gone over to non-compliance with some court orders. At the end of January, a temporary restraining order was issued by the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island that prohibited ‘the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from freezing federal funding and refusing to resume disbursements of congressionally appropriated federal funds.’ This order was defied and the same judge has now issued a new enforcement order.

In pushing the boundaries of presidential powers, Trump is moving into largely untested territory for the US system of governance. Victoria Nourse, director of the Georgetown Law Center on Congress and Democracy, noted that: ‘It’s very rare for a president not to comply with an order. This is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn’t have.’

Vice president JD Vance went so far as to suggest that judges don’t have jurisdiction over President Donald Trump’s ‘legitimate power’. He compared such oversight with a court trying to tell a general how to conduct a battle. According to NBC News, Vance’s remarks led to concerns among legal experts that ‘the United States could be headed toward a ‘constitutional crisis’ or a ‘breakdown of the system’.

Elon Musk, directing the work of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has also strenuously objected to the constraints imposed by judicial oversight. After being temporarily denied access to Treasury Department data, Musk posted on X: ‘a corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached now.’

There is, of course, no end of liberal commentary that responds to Trump’s authoritarian proclivities with the suggestion that the cherished system of US democracy is under attack. In reality, under the very limited form of democracy that exists in the US, a deeply unequal and exploitative system of capitalism has been created that has also established a vast global network of exploitation and violence. Yet, without getting teary-eyed over the Statue of Liberty, it is necessary to understand that Trump most definitely does represent a threat to democratic rights.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) expressed a very widely held viewpoint when it declared that ‘in the United States, we face an authoritarian threat unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes. President Donald Trump is swiftly implementing destructive, dehumanizing, and undemocratic dictates.’

The forces gathered around Trump are ready to impose their destructive agenda in the face of popular opposition but their course of action is also creating huge tensions within the state structure itself and the clash with judicial authority expresses this very clearly. Within political systems that can be described as liberal democracies, there is a sharing of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial wings of the state. The Trump administration is now upsetting that balance to the degree that the term ‘constitutional crisis’ is being bandied around.

At this particular moment in the US, the executive wing is moving to curtail judicial powers with very little in the way of challenge from the legislative side. As Vanity Fair has pointed out, leading Republican politicians have openly sided with Trump in his disputes with the courts. ‘House Speaker Mike Johnson – who is already giddily relinquishing much of his own congressional authority to the executive branch – said he “wholeheartedly” agrees with Vance that the judicial branch shouldn’t exercise its check either and that the courts should “step back”.’

Representative Eli Crane of Arizona dismissed judges who tried to interfere with Trump’s orders as partisan judges ‘abusing their positions’. Echoing this sentiment, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that such legal checks on executive conduct represented nothing less sinister than ‘an assault on the very idea of democracy itself.’

Weak opposition

Even as Trump seeks to rid himself of the limitations imposed by the court system and does so with the support of Republican lawmakers, the opposition that is being mounted by the Democrats is at a shockingly low level. An article in USA Today concludes that Democratic politicians ‘are having a long look in the mirror’ following the defeat of Kamala Harris at the hands of Trump and that ‘their party lacks direction’. On this basis, any credible opposition to Trump’s forward march has been effectively neutralised for the present.

The present malaise of the Democrats, however, may be seen as rather more than a temporary disorientation. The prelude to the defeat of Harris was a Biden presidency that failed to provide a credible alternative to Trump and his America First agenda. The viciousness and intensity of Trump’s attacks may galvanise a somewhat more spirited Democratic response but an effective opposition that might seriously impede the president is not a realistic proposition.

At this point, court rulings against Trump’s measures have had some effect but his increased readiness to defy judicial oversight isn’t being challenged to any serious degree within the political establishment. Moreover, temporary restraints coming from the lower courts notwithstanding, the notoriously reactionary Supreme Court is likely to clear a path for Trump, once appeals are brought before it.

The tensions within the US state structure are very real and highly significant and they speak to a president who is impatient with the restraints imposed by the norms of liberal democracy. However, if Trump is to be challenged and his reactionary agenda defeated, major hopes should not be placed on legislative opposition or the use of court challenges. A major mobilisation by unions and social movements will be needed to stop Trump in his tracks. There is no doubt that the reactionary rampage he has embarked upon, as yet only in its early stages, will generate such decisive confrontations.