Donald Trump’s rapid and controversial movements that have varied from the ban on the citizenship of the duty to the dismissal of 18 general inspectors mean that the American president has shown greater will than his predecessors to violate the Constitution and the Federal law, according to some historians and legal specialists.
These researchers have underlined other actions of Trump which, according to them, violated the law in a blatant way, such as the freezing of the billions of dollars in federal spending and the dismissal of the members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Equal opportunities for employment (EEOC), even if they were confirmed by the Senate and there were several years in their terms.
“Without a doubt, Donald Trump is the most soggy president and the most scofflaw that we have ever seen in the history of the United States,” said Laurence Tribe, one of the country’s main constitutional scholars and professor Emeritus at the Harvard Law School.
Tribe said Trump had “a Blitzkrieg on the law and the Constitution.” The very fact that illegal actions have released the speed of a Gatling pistol which quickly draws the very difficult fact for people to focus on one of them. This is obviously part of the strategy. »»
Tribe said that the so-called break in federal expenses that the Trump administration had ordered last Monday “was a clear usurpation of the exclusive power of a coordinate branch (the congress) of the handbag”.
Before the Trump administration was free of charge two days later, several groups had continued to stop the frost, saying that Trump had violated the Constitution and the 1974 Law on the control of the impoundment, which allows presidents to retain the funds in limited circumstances, but only if they follow for the first time several special procedures – which the legal experts declared that Trump had not done .
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley School of Law from the University of California, also expressed his dismay of what he said was the blatant flourishing of Trump’s law during his first days.
“An astonishing number of its executive actions clearly violates the constitution and the federal law,” said Chemerinsky. “I cannot think of any president who has never ignored the Constitution so largely in the first 10 days of office.
“I certainly doubt that all president has made so much law so quickly that affects so many people,” continued Chemerinsky. “The freezing of federal spending potentially affects tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people.”
This frost caused an alarm and chaos across the country because it has disrupted Medicaid payments, childcare programs, meals for the elderly, housing subsidies and ED special programs. Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the management and budget office, said that freezing was necessary to stop “the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgender and social engineering policies of Green New Deal ”.
Federal judges quickly decided to temporarily block expenditure and the ban on the citizenship of the dawn. Last Tuesday, a judge of the Federal District Court in Washington DC, Loren Alikhan, suspended the expenses freezing. Faced with enormous confusion and criticism of frost, the Trump administration canceled it on Wednesday.
On January 23, a federal district judge in Seattle, John Coughhenour, appointed Ronald Reagan, temporarily blocked Trump’s order to end the citizenship of the birth law. “This is a manifestly unconstitutional order,” said Coughhenour. “I find it hard to understand how a member of the bar indicates unequivocally that it is a constitutional order. It just makes me mind mind.
Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, defended the president’s decision to prohibit citizenship in the dawn. Wednesday, in a briefing, she said: “We are ready to fight this to the Supreme Court if we owe it, because President Trump believes that this is a necessary step to ensure the borders of our nation and protect our homeland. “
Many legal experts and democratic legislators have condemned the dismissal by Trump of 18 general inspectors, who serve as independent officials who audit and investigate agencies for waste, fraud and abuse. These criticisms, with Chuck Grassley, an Iowa republican who chairs the senate judicial committee, noted that Trump had not given the congress the 30 -day notice required and the specific reasons for the dismissals.
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At the end of last Monday, Trump dismissed Gwynne Wilcox, member of the NLRB, and two members of the EEOC, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels. The three – members of the independent councils – were appointed by democratic presidents and there were several years in their terms.
Kate Andrias, professor of constitutional law and administrative law at Columbia University, described these dismissals as “unprecedented and illegal”. Regarding the dismissal of Wilcox, she said: “The national labor relations law clearly indicates that the president cannot dismiss the members of the board of directors only for negligence towards duty and embezzlement. NLRB members cannot be dismissed simply because the president does not want the board of directors. »»
Andrias, however, noted that the conservative supermajure of the Supreme Court could reign in favor of Trump on these layoffs.
“Trump could have some support from the Supreme Court on this subject,” she said, adding that the court, with his attitudes of “radical anti-administrative law”, “could reject 90 years of legal precedent and agree With the president that he had the authority to dismiss members of independent organizations. »»
Andrias compared Trump to another president known to have merged the Constitution and the Supreme Court: “Andrew Jackson also had a record for violating the Constitution so as to extend his power,” said Andrias. “But in modern times, it is unprecedented for a president to act in this way to enlarge his own power and act in violation of the Constitution and federal laws.”
Julian Zelizer, a historian in Princeton, said that Richard Nixon had sometimes violated the law – especially in the Watergate scandal – but “I do not think he tried to overthrow parts of the Constitution. So maybe Trump makes him beat. “”
Zelizer said that Trump’s freezing was “an effort to essentially ignore the constitutional power of the congress” of the handbag and “throw the pound law in garbage”.
“I do not remember another president who tried to throw a large part of the Constitution by the window to do what he wants,” added Zelizer.
Tribe expressed his concern that Trump’s actions weakened the rule of law as well as respect for the law.
“We must focus on the fact that the sum of this is superior to the parties. Railing the Constitution and the acts of the Congress repeatedly creates not only tears in the fabric that occur at each violation, but shive everything, “said Tribe. “This is only the very beginning of this administration. If people standardize this legislation instead of repelling, it will be very difficult to restore the government system that most of us grew up assuming that it would be in place. »»