Trump spends weekend in full dictator mode—plus golf
President Donald Trump thrust the country even further into a constitutional crisis over the weekend with a series of blatantly illegal actions that left legal scholars sounding alarm bells about the future of the United States.
Not only has Trump declared speech he doesn’t like to be illegal, he is even ignoring court orders as part of his deportation quest.
“Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer whom Trump targeted by removing his security clearance, wrote in a post on X.
Zaid also predicted that the actions Trump took this weekend “[u]ltimately will lead to Trump impeachment proceedings” if Democrats win control of Congress.
Trump began his past weekend by baselessly accusing media outlets that do not publish universally positive news about him of engaging in unlawful activity, saying in a nakedly partisan speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, “It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal."
On the same day, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, revoking security clearances of lawyers who work at the firm, and saying he will cancel the contracts of any companies or entities that are represented by the law firm’s attorneys.
He targeted this law firm because it hired a prosecutor who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Trump also targeted the firm because it employed a lawyer who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records.
Trump had already targeted two other large law firms—Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling—for similar reasons, all an attempt to try to scare lawyers out of representing people or causes Trump doesn’t like.
When Trump issued the new executive order against Paul, Weiss, a federal judge had already blocked part of Trump’s order against Perkins Coie, whose lawyers Trump tried to ban from federal buildings. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell accused the Trump administration of illegally retaliating against the firm, which she said “sends little chills down my spine,” The Washington Post reported.
Not content with that illegality, Trump also effectively axed seven federal agencies created and funded by Congress, including the government-funded media outlet Voice of America. It was the latest time Trump ignored Congress’ directives by making the unilateral decision to cancel congressionally appropriated spending—many of which have already been overturned by federal judges.
On Saturday, Trump invoked an 18th century law that the United States once used to shamefully lock up Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II, using it to justify deporting immigrants without due process.
Trump declared that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization and an invading force, and used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which allows for noncitizens to be deported without due process if the president declares that the U.S. is at war—to say that anyone he deems a member of Tren de Aragua will be subject to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal, and further that they shall not be permitted residence in the United States.”
“The United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority—which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations—is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman, whose organization sued the Trump administration over the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, said in a news release.
“From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful,” she continued.
Trump put more than 230 Venezuelans he accused of being Tren de Aragua members on a plane and sent them to a violent prison in El Salvador, where thousands of men are housed in cramped cells and are never allowed outdoors. It’s unclear if any of the men on the plane were actually members of the gang, with one lawyer for one of the deported immigrants saying that his client had been wrongfully labeled a gang member because of misinterpreted tattoos, The New York Times reported.
Trump sent the immigrants to El Salvador despite a judge ordering him to turn the planes around and return the immigrants to the United States, a blatant violation of the separation of powers.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration did not follow the order because "[a] single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil."
Even more disturbing is that the Trump administration then posted a propaganda video to his Truth Social profile. The video depicts the deportations, with masked jail officials mistreating the Venezuelans whom Trump sent to El Salvador, possibly never to be seen again.
And on Sunday, Trump took his lawlessness to new heights when he ridiculously declared in a batshit-crazy Truth Social post that pardons former President Joe Biden issued to members of Congress on the now-defunct committee that probed the Capitol insurrection are "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT."
Trump said Biden’s pardons of the members of Congress are void because he baselessly claimed that Biden did not know that the pardons were issued. He appears to have based this new conspiracy theory off an article in the right-wing New York Post, which said that a “key aide” to Biden determined which orders he would sign and which would be signed by autopen.
However, from the Post’s own report:
One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.
Meanwhile, as the United States delved deeper into authoritarianism, Trump was more concerned with his favorite pastime: golf.
In a move taken straight from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s playbook, Trump congratulated himself for winning a golf championship at one of his shitty golf properties in Florida, writing in a Truth Social post: "Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!"
We are in seriously dark times.