Regardless of whether people favor or abhor the current actions of the Trump administration, three facts are undeniable.
- The Trump administration is usurping the power of the purse, which the U.S. Constitution gave to Congress. The administration cannot legally end funding to agencies and programs already funded by Congress.
- The Trump administration is ignoring regulations that govern how agency administrators can be fired.
- The Trump administration is threatening to ignore the rulings of federal judges.
While these facts, reported by universally respected news outlets, might lead to results that please some people (shuttering various agencies, gutting regulations that feel constraining to corporations), the broader outcome should worry all Americans.
If this president can flout the Constitution, can all future presidents flout the Constitution? If this president can ignore the rulings of the courts, can all future presidents do so? That’s the broader outcome.
The United States is a concept, an idea about how all of us can live together in some kind of rowdy, argumentative but ultimately reasonable way. It is only an idea. The minute the wealthiest and most powerful among us decide that they don’t have to live within the guidelines first agreed upon 236 years ago by 13 newly formed states, that idea disappears in a puff of smoke and U.S. democracy is dead.
A little over three decades ago, a genius editor at the Anchorage Daily News (winner of two Pulitzer Prizes) gave those of us working in the newsroom these great pins, riffing on a line from the Hell’s Angels biker gang.
Write Hard, Die Free.
I’m wearing my pin in solidarity with the journalists currently under attack by this administration. I’m wearing my pin in solidarity with attorneys and judges upholding the U.S. Constitution in the face on unprecedented threats. I’m wearing my pin in solidarity with the activists standing in public places calling for all of us, regardless of our political persuasions, to uphold the principles that have held this nation together, mostly, since 1789.
As a retired journalist, I have a very small platform with my blog. But I will write hard and die free in support of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. democracy, a true north strong and free Canada, and a stubborn belief that all of us ordinary people are better together than the oligarchs who take our labor at a discount in order to amass more of everything for themselves.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 