BRING IT ON

Trump Signals to Courts and Congress: Just Try and Stop Me

Some of Donald Trump’s executive orders stretched the limits of the law, while others flat-out ignored it.

President Donald Trump appears to be gunning for a fight with everyone and everything within reach, from Democrats to the courts and members of his own party.

The barrage of executive orders he signed on Monday all but guarantee a string of constitutional showdowns that will either stop his agenda in its tracks or expand presidential power to new, dictatorial heights, Axios reported.

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His most audacious orders ended birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, even though the 14th Amendment to the Constitution explicitly says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens, and gave himself 75 days to suspend the law banning TikTok, which was passed with a congressional super-majority and upheld by the Supreme Court.

He also commuted the sentence of 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militias serving up to 22 years in prison who were convicted of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6, 2021. Many of those defendants were sentenced by judges who were also Trump appointees, Axios reported.

“They’ve already been in jail for a long time,” Trump said by way of justification. “These people have been destroyed.”

In fact, they’re already out and re-arming themselves, since Trump’s pardon wipes away their felon status as well as the federal ban on convicted felons owning firearms and ammunition.

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Other executive orders play fast and loose with the concept of “national emergency.”

One declares a blanket emergency so the Pentagon can redirect funds and deploy troops without congressional approval. Another declares a specific “national energy emergency,” even though U.S. fossil fuel production is at an all-time high, in an attempt to bypass environmental and climate laws.

Yet another designates cartels as foreign terrorist organizations so Trump can deploy special forces to Mexico without the permission of Congress.

The move is seen as particularly antagonistic considering Republicans control both houses of Congress and had expressed willingness to work with the president to enact his agenda.

The orders have exhilarated his base, but they’ve unnerved liberals and small-government conservatives alike, according to Axios.

Joe Lonsdale, an outspoken Trump supporter in Silicon Valley, wrote an op-ed in The Free Press urging the newly sworn-in president not to abandon the rule of law just to save TikTok. Trump might be the “undisputed king” of MAGA, but as president he is the head of a republic, not a monarch.

“In America, we abide by the rule of law,” he wrote. “Even when the law comes for a popular app—TikTok—that the MAGA king likes.”

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