Trump is The Decider Bush 43, Obama, and Biden wrapped into one: junking due process, designating people terrorists without evidence and ignoring the evidence when they are, censoring speech, and generally making a mockery of the rule of law

 

This is classic, the Trump administration breaks the law left and right, day in and day out, and his Little Dog Marco Rubio yaps about the rule of law in Brazil

 

The Rule of Law Is Breaking Down in Brazil

Marco Rubio, Department of State

LOL I don't recall candidate John Fetterman being upset AT ALL with Joe Biden playing the authoritarian card on September 1, 2022

 

Fetterman: Comparing People To Hitler Will Incite Somebody To Take Them Out

 

... Well, I mean, I'm consistent about that. You know, any kinds of extreme rhetoric, left or right, is, is really dangerous. ...

 

 

 

... Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. ... They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. ...

 

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump will stop at nothing in his quest for imperial power and will destroy the credibility of US Treasury debt

 

telegraph.co.uk

If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

8 April 2025

---

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

The Fed will indeed cut rates this year but not until it is able to see through the confusing blizzard of tariffs and the ricochet retaliation of an angry world.

Powell told Congress that the tariff shock is much bigger than expected and may set off “persistent” inflation rather than just a one-off jump in the price level. He came close to damning Trumponomics as a recipe for low-growth stagflation. That is a red flag to a bull.

The current debate over whether or not Trump has the legal power to fire Powell entirely misunderstands the character of the Maga revolution. America’s rule of law is for guidance only these days.

You could say it was ever thus. Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court after it blocked the New Deal. He failed, and unleashed tax investigations to settle scores, as did Richard Nixon. But Trump is an order of magnitude more outrageous.

Powell will not go without a fight. “I will never, ever, ever leave this job voluntarily until my term ends under any circumstances,” he said during Trump 1.0.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the administration could sideline Powell by appointing a “shadow” Fed chairman, who could steer the markets by issuing forward guidance. But this does not overcome resistance from the Fed board and the hawkish regional presidents.

A secretive team of Trump loyalists drew up a 10-page report before the election proposing more radical measures. These include forcing the Fed to “align policy with administration goals” or even to make the president an “acting” member of the Fed board.

Trump could purge members of the seven-strong Fed board one by one until they get the message. The law states that the president can terminate the 14-year term of a Fed governor “for cause”, usually meaning malfeasance or neglect.

But Trump has just abused his tariff powers on an heroic scale by invoking fictitious “emergencies”. He could no doubt stretch the meaning of “for cause” to anything he wants. The Supreme Court has the last say, but Trump-appointed justices have already shown a strong leaning towards an imperial presidency.

In any case, there are other methods to bring the Fed to heel.

Maga vigilantes are intimidating American judges by having pizzas delivered to their homes – a mob tactic to say “we know where you live”. So we can assume that recalcitrant members of the Federal Open Market Committee will face this sort of treatment.

The major US banks are raising their inflation forecasts to 4pc or higher this year. This inflation will hit before the last three price shocks – Covid, the Putin commodity spike and Biden’s overspending – have faded from immediate memory. It is exactly how inflation psychology becomes embedded.

A variant happened in the 1970s. Nixon bullied the Fed into expansionary policies, with some choice language on “the myth of the autonomous Fed” that later surfaced in the Oval Office tapes.

Loose money stoked inflation, so Nixon ordered a freeze on prices and wages in 1971, declaring war on “gougers”. It was very popular. Illiterate policies often are.

If Trump succeeds in extracting rate cuts from the Fed and tax cuts from Congress, the same problem is going to arise. So my assumption is that he will blame the symptoms and will resort to price controls.

The elephantine difference is that US federal debt was 34pc of GDP in 1971. Today it is 122pc on the Fed measure, and galloping upwards. The fiscal deficit is over 6pc as far as the eye can see.

The US does not have the domestic savings to fund this debt appetite. The savings rate has collapsed to 0.6pc of national income. It was 12pc in the 1960s.

Foreign investors have been plugging the gap. This soaks up a large part of the world’s savings – the underlying cause of America’s trade deficit.

If you think the stock market gyrations of the last few days are terrifying, just wait until Trump destroys the credibility of the Fed and of US treasury debt, the anchor of the global system.

He could order a captive Fed to relaunch quantitative easing and buy the bonds, but to do that when inflation is running hot would be seen by the whole world as naked fiscal dominance. It would set off a price spiral and a collapse of the currency – the sort of outcome seen over the decades in Latin America, or Erdoğan’s Turkey.

The end destination is a return to US capital controls to stop foreign funds and US investors from taking their money out of America. A man willing to impose 116pc tariffs – including pre-existing ones –  on Chinese goods and shut down the biggest bilateral trade relationship in the world as if it were a TV reality show will stop at nothing.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market/

Some of what Dark Brandon said in 2022 is what some Democrats still want their leader to say today in 2025

 

... Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. ... there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country. ... MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. ... They promote authoritarian leaders. ... They thrive on chaos. ... American democracy only works only if we choose to respect the rule of law and the institutions that were set up in this chamber behind me. ...

 

-- Joe Biden, 1 September 2022, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA

 

 

The voters' response to this in 2022 was to flip the Democrats' House 222 majority to a 222 Republican one.

 

In 2024, the Republican lead narrowed to 220-215. Special elections in Florida this week will either ratify that lead or narrow it some more.

 

 

 

The constitutional crisis that many feared from a vengeful, re-empowered Trump is here

 Congress is cowed; that’s one supposedly coequal branch of government down. But federal courts are proving more resistant to Donald Trump’s trampling of laws and the Constitution. Now, just two months in office, the president has all but crossed the red line — defying a judge’s order — that for more than two centuries has separated the rule of law in this country from its undoing. ... 

The chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., schooled both the congressman and the president, issuing a rare statement of what should be obvious: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

But Trump won’t be educated. ...

In effect, and denials aside, Trump and his lieutenants defied the law ...

Jackie Calmes for The Los Angeles Times, here.

Remember that Donald Trump betrayed freedom in Afghanistan in February 2020 as coronavirus was about to explode, and in Hong Kong in May 2020 as America was about to explode over George Floyd

 Betraying Ukraine is just another day's work in February 2025, but the question is, Who will it next be, in May 2025?

 

"We just signed an agreement . . . the Taliban will be killing terrorists."

 

"Up until yesterday I still believed Hong Kong has the rule of law."

 

Former S&P sovereign bond unit executive who participated in the Obama era 2011 credit downgrade basically calls Trump's America a banana republic, and DOGE not a proper government department

 WSJ: What about DOGE’s accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system?

Kraemer: We don’t have all the details of what they took and on what basis. It seems highly irregular. People from a department, which is not even a proper government department, that have gone and gotten access to data, that we have to assume is quite, I should say sensitive, which doesn’t belong in the hands of unelected individuals. 

WSJ: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Kraemer: Yes, I think I have seen this. Regimes that don’t respect checks and balances. But they tend to be more in the emerging markets. This is exactly what sets rich and poor countries apart, right? It’s the qualities of institutions, the rule of law, the transparency of decision-making. 

So have I seen this? Yes. But have I seen it in an advanced economy, in an OECD member country? No, I have not.

The whole thing is here.

Al Hunt and James Carville laughably pretend that Obama didn't dominate Washington by flooding the zone with shit like Trump is doing

Hey Obama! Guess where I'm calling from!

Carville: Trump Has Flooded The Zone With Sh*t And We Don't Have A Response 

 

Al Hunt:  And [Trump] dominates today like no other president I've seen. And he dominates with a reckless disregard for truth and more importantly, for the rule of law. 

 

James Carville: The Democrats are depressed . . .. 

 

It's comic how these old farts don't remember 2009-2010, how civilian employment crashed by 6 million, how 6 million homes went into foreclosure, how housing wealth evaporated, how hundreds of banks failed, and how Obama was content to hand off all these problems to Democrat gangsters from Wall Street to bail out their cronies and prosecuted no one, all while providing zero leadership to a divided Democrat Congress preoccupied with . . . Obamacare, as if people losing everything in this situation had healthcare as their number one priority.

 

And then Democrats promptly handed everyone healthcare they couldn't afford and couldn't use.

 

Talk about depressing.

 

Talk about shit.

 

These ridiculous goofs, President Biden, VP Harris, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand should all be removed from office before Monday

 The ERA was never ratified according to the rules. Pretending otherwise and using the power of the executive to assert otherwise is a violation of their oaths of office. There is no 28th Amendment to the US Constitution. The ERA is not the law of the land. These are renegade Democrats, but I repeat myself, enemies of the rule of law and enemies of democracy. They mock us with this stunt, and deserve mockery in return.

 

 

WaPo defends rule of law in Pennsylvania, says Democrat defiance of judicial election rulings is corrosive to democracy

 ... elected Democratic officials in Philadelphia and three other counties — Bucks, Centre and Montgomery — voted this week to defy these and other court decisions at the request of lawyers for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey ...

Mr. Casey has almost certainly lost this race. The Associated Press called it for Mr. McCormick on Nov. 7. Mr. Casey’s deficit still appears insurmountable. The three-term incumbent sees it differently and has every right to plead his case in court. State law also entitles Mr. Casey to a statewide recount because Mr. McCormick’s margin of victory is smaller than half a percentage point, though not by much. A recount is unlikely to change the outcome.

More.

 

Donald Trump is already hard at work making long lists of all the things he's not going to accomplish as president, which he'll foolishly fritter away his time on

 Ten points about The Swamp.

Seven points about The War on the Drug Cartels.

Trump's saying all this stuff and we don't even know yet if Republicans will win the US House, where they have 214 seats as of right now and lead narrowly in 8 undecided races. If they win them all they'll have 222 seats, with 218 needed for the majority.

If not, well that'll be the end of all ambition, now won't it?

222 at best is a very narrow margin to accomplish anything anyway, a mere continuation of the status quo where Republicans in the House must tread lightly to keep the caucus unified with a very similarly sized narrow majority (220).

What kind of sweep was this? Once again the Trump movement . . . isn't.

It would be easy to call this stuff hubris from Trump. Let's just say he still hasn't learned anything about how to accomplish anything of relatively permanent value. He has NO priorities when everything is a priority. He is, once again, unserious.

The Senate will be in Republican hands, so we'll at least get more judicial appointments who might advance traditional American principles of law and order.

The scuttlebutt is that the first agenda item in Congress will be making Trump's expiring tax reform permanent.

I can imagine him having to waste the entire first year on this. He'd be better off quickly settling for its extension for another ten years under reconciliation rules, and then move along smartly to immigration and energy reforms before the midterms are upon us in 2026, after which he'll be the lamest of lame ducks.

If there's any hope of boosting GDP and improving everyone's pocketbook they've got to make energy reform the priority. And mere immigration enforcement solves an untold number of other problems which bedevil the country, like illegal drugs, crime, and social spending.

Spending bills will come as they will, and should simply aim to starve the federal government of money to shrink it, as could have been the case last time but nothing changed. The beast grows naturally because permanent spending programs are indexed to inflation. That isn't going to be stopped. Growing the economy to pay the bills is therefore job one.

I'm expecting very little positive from this lot, but I do hope J. D. Vance will emerge at the end of it to take us to a better future.

Democrats who say they fear Trump because he's an authoritarian are absolutely comic. Watch for rogue judges to hamstring him just like last time, and Trump will bluster and fume and things will simply muddle along.

But, of course, unforeseen events like wars have a way of intruding and making mooks of us all. Let's hope Trump can finally make a deal to end and prevent them.

Meanwhile phony Joe protests he's not an extremist

 

I Have Not Engaged in Extreme Rhetoric, Trump Has

President Joe Biden, NBC News

 

President who labeled half of the country extremists now appeals for unity

 “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Mr. Biden said in a fiery Independence Hall speech on Sept. 1, 2022, looking to shape the midterm elections. “And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.”

He continued: “MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies. And yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.” ...

“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,” he lamented. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.”

Democrat scare-mongering on democracy and the rule of law has totally flopped: Voters think both will be about the same no matter whom they elect

Most voters think the two are an equal threat to democracy lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The margin of error is 4.2 points.

CBS News here.

We must make these miscreants pay for what they have done

 Josh Hammer, here:

The imperative of this late hour of the American republic, in order to even attempt to rebalance our wildly off-balance pendulum, is to respond to the Left as it has acted toward us: by wielding political and prosecutorial power to reward friends and punish enemies -- to reward our side's forces of civilizational sanity and punish their side's forces of civilizational arson -- within the broad confines of the rule of law.

If we want to get back to "neutrality," at this perilous point, it's going to first take bloodying up some noses. That is unfortunate for those Americans who actually do value and cherish neutral enforcement of the rule of law. But yet again, here we are.

Above all, it is imperative that the Right not bat an eyelash. Do not be intimidated by this blatant show of crass thuggery masquerading as a legal proceeding. It's now full steam ahead through November. We must make these miscreants pay for what they have done.

Frankly, sympathetic as I am, I don't see how that will change anything. It will simply validate lawfare, the weaponizing of the legal system for political ends.

Democrats have crossed the Rubicon.

Escalation seems inevitable, but then there will be more escalation after that, and more after that.

That's what this means.

There has to be a better way.

 

Sad to learn Ron Radosh joined the enemy

In a cogent essay, a leading conservative scholar and former high ranking State Department official, Peter Berkowitz, examines why about half the country believes elite legal progressives “have weaponized federal law enforcement.” He notes that “four criminal indictments [were] brought against Trump−all between April 4 and August 10, 2023, more than two years after he left office and just as the 2024 campaign ramped up….” In other words (as the Marxists used to say) it was no coincidence. 

Berkowitz characterizes as “reckless” the Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot on the grounds that he violated the 14^th Amendment’s prohibition on those who “engaged in insurrection.” He points out that Trump has never been charged (let alone convicted) of insurrection. 

Berkowitz excoriates neoconservative Robert Kagan’s argument that “the threat Trump poses to freedom and democracy in America justifies abusing the law to banish him from the political arena.” In this sense, Berkowitz notes, ”anti-Trumpers thereby facilitate the unraveling of the rule of law that they seek to avert.” 

Gabe Schoenfeld and fellow apostate Ron Radosh devote an entire essay to rebutting Berkowitz’s argument. They defend the efforts by the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president as “the working out of the rule of law.” Further, Schoenfeld and Radosh laud Kagan’s endorsement (he “deserves high praise”) of “taking every conceivable measure” to stop Trump.

What better language than “every conceivable measure” to describe the logic of war?

More.

Peter Navarro chose allegiance to the separate and equal power of the Executive, of which he was a part and which the Legislative transgressed in a political witchhunt

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department wants former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to spend six months behind bars after being convicted of criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena. ...

“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” prosecutors wrote in Thursday’s sentencing memo.

 More.

Progressives and liberals are in a panic over Ron DeSantis because he's tapping into a huge shift in public support for law and order and against LGBT

 Gallup shows the huge shifts in 2023 from 2022.

Support for the death penalty is up 5-points nationally. Support for LGBT is down 7-points. Those are massive changes.

And on most of the issues tracked, which are barometers of libertinism in the United States, support is also down, from birth control to fornication, to teenage sex and divorce.

Win or lose, DeSantis represents the backlash against the left which is sweeping the country.

 

This is how America ends

 One place at a time.

America and its free market capitalism depends on rules, a shared commitment to them and to their enforcement:

Sound money, not fiat money;

truth, not "my truth";

law and order, not one law for me and another for thee.

When you can't trust anybody anymore, it is over. People vote with their feet, as do corporations. 

Crime, Homelessness, Taxes: Hollywood Big Shots Fleeing LA...

As Violent Crime in LA Rises, Demand for Private Security Among Wealthy Soars...

UPDATE: In Atlanta's Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede... 

AMAZON relocating workers from Seattle office due to crime...

DC WAWA closes amid ongoing shoplifting, violence...

WALGREENS closing more stores in San Fran due to organized theft...  

Violence rises as employees fight back against shoplifters, thieves... 

Chicago's Wealthy Neighborhoods Hire Private Police as Crime Rises...

NYC Mayor Eric Adams asks tech executives at private dinner to keep companies in the city

STARBUCKS Closing Stores, Citing Safety Concerns...

 SAFEWAY Cuts Hours Due To 'Off The Charts' Shoplifting... Iconic TARGET Store in San Fran to Close Amid Shoplifting Wave...MCDONALD'S CEO Raises Crime Concerns for Business in Chicago...  Portland families move to escape homeless camps, crime...  Ken Griffin Moving CITADEL From Chicago to Miami Following Crime Complaints...

A "political" Supreme Court which is "balanced" is wishy washy precisely because it is a function of an Executive branch hamstrung by the 22nd Amendment

  This never occurs to Hugo for some reason.

A Court system which depends on the transient figure of the president for its existence can hardly be anything but political. That's where the fetish for political balance on the Court comes from. It is simply an extension of the overweening impulse to limit the Executive power. And it's not a coincidence that the loudest voices for it come from the Legislative. It's an expression of their tyranny over everything.

Of course the Supreme Court is a political institution.

It is appointed by an elected president, and confirmed by an elected Senate. But it is the two term limit which sharpens its tip, raising the stakes over every appointment.

The Court has become more political precisely because the political power of the Executive which appoints it has been limited. It's how the wronged Executive manages to live on, long after he has been forced from the scene. He routinely runs for office partly on the promise to partisans that he will make the right appointments to the bench.

If the Framers had intended the Executive to be hamstrung in this way while the other two branches were not, they would have said so. 

The people have the right to elect whomever to the presidency as often as they wish, just as they have the right to return Nancy Pelosi to the US House year after year. They also have the right to get rid of the bum if they don't like his appointments. Anything less gives too much power to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, and to the judges he leaves behind.

The way to improve constancy of meaning on the Court and consistency in the rule of law is to improve both in the Executive.

We aren't going to be saved by a Court which has temporarily recovered its senses. They could just as well lose them again. And they'll also still be there, long after the president who appointed them is gone.

Who checks the Court?